Adam F.
Yelp
So this wasn't our first plan for the day - originally we were planning on hiking up Flattop Mountain the last day of our vacation over the summer, but it was the last day of our vacation, and we were tired. Backup plan, take advantage of the free shuttle from downtown, spend the morning at a zoo. I wasn't expecting that much, so I was pleasantly surprised - it is certainly not a *huge* zoo, and yes, they absolutely do set up many of the bigger exhibits so the animals can rest in peace (never did see a polar bear, and only saw one tiny shadow of a tiger once), and several exhibit spaces were just empty/with "coming soon" signs, but we still spent about 3 hours here with the animals they did have, so that plus having free transportation (once an hour) to/from downtown, $17 a person seemed totally reasonable.
Admittedly, a non-trivial amount of that time was just spent watching their two huge brown bears, in 100% full viewing view, trying and absolutely failing to avoid their food getting snatched by a flock of a couple dozen taunting crows and/or ravens (not sure which - they weren't from the zoo, obviously), who seemed to enjoy actively taunting the bears before stealing their lunch. Actually, watching the outside birds taunting the deer was pretty fun too, also watching them taunting the birds that *had* been locked up as a zoo exhibit. Basically, this is a fun zoo if you enjoy watching corvids being total jerks to other animals, haha. The river otters were pretty fun to watch, too - they have several, their full play area is viewable, and at least when we were there, they were *hyper*!
P.s. They also sell really cheap popcorn at the gift shop out in front, but it was *way* too salty the day were there. We tossed some of it out, we just couldn't finish it for how salty it was. Not that you go to the zoo to eat popcorn, but it was seriously salty.