Willowbank Wildlife Reserve

There are many small animals. If you want to interact with them up close, remember to buy a few packs of food for them. Kids love it very much. The venue is clean and tidy. The little sister at the front desk is very enthusiastic and professional. Highly recommended.

Kiwis! You can actually get a chance to view some kiwis! The layout of the park, with it's pathways over and around the water is magically. They have a large assortment of animals and the opportunity to feed some of them! A great experience for people of all ages and abilities. If you're in Christchurch I highly recommend a visit.

Willowbank Wildlife Reserve is absolutely amazing, a perfect mix of native, farm, and exotic animals. The kiwi enclosure was the highlight for me, peaceful, natural, and the closest I’ve ever been to seeing a kiwi up close! The staff are super friendly, knowledgeable, and clearly care deeply about conservation. The grounds are clean and easy to walk through, with beautiful native bush and photo spots everywhere. Feeding the eels and lemurs was such a fun surprise. Great for all ages, and only a short drive from the city or airport. Definitely one of Christchurch’s must-visit attractions!

Love visiting every time! This time did the lemur encounter and it was awesome! They were very gentle when taking the food from us. The keeper was amazing and had some great facts to share. Feeding the eels, the farmyard and going through kiwi habitat are other favourites. Been going often for the past 8 years or so and totally recommend the child's annual membership so they can go with any adult :) - thanks for another memory Willowbank! - Pics attached, was hard finding many with no people in them :D

A wonderful place for weekend with children. It has a good cafe near the entrance. The food is good. There are lots of friendly animals inside. I highly recommend you buy the food at the entrance so you or your children can feed them.

We really wanted to see a native kiwi bird on our trip and being a shy nocturnal creature there are not many places where you can see one. Willowbank just on the edge of Christchurch is one place where you can. They have a dark enclosure which once you have adjusted your eyes gives you a decent chance of spotting a kiwi. We saw two and just watched as they moved around in the dark. The centre also has other wildlife such as black swans, deer, wallabies, goats, pigs, kea parrots etc so well worth a visit.

Lovely kiwi enclosure which is the reason we went. They have a big dark room with several kiwi out and about as they think it’s the night. I loved seeing them. I also really liked the kia enclosure but I did feel bad for them since they are not as cheeky and inquisitive as those we met in the wild and that’s probably due to captivity. Unfortunately the park is overrun with rats, so you might get more animal encounters than you bargain for! I guess it’s from all the feed you can buy getting dropped around by people so it’s hard to contain, but we probably saw about 20 in our 2 hour visit.

Fantastic family fun, well maintained, handles large crowds and animals look happy and cared for. Cafe serves good variety of food and the coffee hit the spot.

My wife and I were at Willowbank Wildlife Reserve, coming from Mount Cook, October, 2025 It may have originated as a zoo, but later became an animals Conservation park. It has enough variety of NZ animals for you to view, some fairly close or in good view. In particular, the Kiwi bird area caught our attention. There is an area with a lot of longfin eels that you can reach out and touch! Ah, no thanks. The kea bird is in a special area, no photographs, though there are several glass cases showing its life cycle. There are two takahē species-flightless swamp hens native to New Zealand, almost wiped out late 19th century. It has a red beak, short wings, large feet and long toes.

I was humbly impressed with this establishment. A friend and I arrived at 11am on a Monday afternoon. Parking was seamless and instead of the $29.99 entry fee we were charged $22 for the park. Not sure what saved us the discount but we didn't complain. We walked out and a large welcome to the New Zealand experience sign greeted us. Right after was a fairly large and shallow pond of water with some of the largest eels I've ever seen. They were waiting by the dock for some tourists to come along and feed them. My friend and I considered returning back to purchase some food but we resisted and instead watched the people behind us partake in the unique experience. Next we saw some friendly fallow deer sticking their heads through the gate. Again we wanted to return to the front to buy food but at this point we decided to just continue. This place would do well to sell food for the animals at other various points of the park. The exhibits were very well designed and the layout was wonderful. We transitioned into each section of the park and were met with animals who were engaging and lively. Majority of the park consists of birds and some are quite majestic (golden pheasant was one of my favorites). There are some wallabies and monkeys like the ring tailed lemur and one of my favorite monkeys- the smart capuchins. Although the kiwis were the main event (saved for last as well) they weren't my favorite part of the zoo. There were 5 of them and I enjoyed seeing them in person, but my favorite part was probably interacting with the entertaining creatures along the way. The llamas were hilariously involved with people and made me laugh as I proceeded to take a few videos. The entire park took us about 90 minutes to walk through. To end the journey we ate at the cafe. I ordered the pumpkin soup and bacon bagel. The soup was extremely spicy (I didn't enjoy it) but the bagel was delicious! They were generous with the bacon and the crispy cheesy bagel was scrumptious. We sat by the window where reindeer watched us dine and then toasted ourselves by the large fire. Last, we visited the gift shop and proceeded to buy some things at a 25% discount. This must be the perfect time to visit this place (July). I'm sorry to read the negative remarks concerning this park, however my experience was quite remarkable. The staff was very friendly and we couldn't have asked for a better experience. I highly recommend you visit this establishment, especially if you're into close encounters with beautiful animals.

J and I stopped in for a quick last-minute visit on the way to the airport, which is less than 10 minutes away from here. We wanted to see kiwis!!!! We weren't disappointed at all. It's basically a small zoo, with a very wide variety of New Zealand animals - from all sorts of birds and waterfowl, to farm and domesticated animals, to lizards and more. The front desk said typically they recommend allotting 1.5-2 hours for the entire visit. We jammed in what we could in about 45 minutes, so we missed quite a bit. Kiwis are nocturnal - so the kiwis are in a nighttime-mimicking habitat so that visitors can see them during daylight hours. There were 5 in there and we saw 4 of them, which is really good. They were very active! Made little grunting noises at each other and ran around, digging and moving about. Really cool. It was pretty dim in there so a bit hard to see but you could see enough to enjoy the experience. The cost for adult admission was $29.50 NZD and we thought this was pretty reasonable. Other places where kiwi viewing is possible were more expensive (like $35ish in Franz Josef and $40-something in Queenstown).

Stop!! It's a tourist trap! Willowbank was made for North American tourists with small children. It's super expensive, hokey, and the food is terrible. The saving grace, however, is the chance to see a real life kiwi bird, which is pretty incredible. Otherwise, the rest of the "experience" is disappointing, and the nature preserve is quite small and walk-able in less than an hour. My co-workers had warned me that Willowbank's Maori Ko Tane paled in comparison to those found on the North Island...and they were right. In fact, their Ko Tane featured only 6 performers, four of whom were teenagers, and none of whom were convincing as scary warriors or skilled dancers. The participants from the audience, with a little practice, could have given them a run for their money on stage! When we have more visitors who are itching to see animals, we will skip Willowbank and take them to Orana instead.

It is worth going to see the animals/birds up close. Don't do the hungi. They could have cooked it in a kitchen for all you see. The food is not worth it, well the dessert maybe. The show, although cute, is not really worth it unless it's your only option to see Maori culture.

Willowbank couldn't exactly be classified as a 'zoo' as such as it's more the smaller animals. This would make Willowbank a better place to take small children. There's some gibbons, kiwis, otters, lots of farmyard style animals. There are donkey rides available and there is often face painting on offer. If you're after the bigger animals - elephants, lions, tigers etc etc I suggest you head to Orana Park, but for a chilled day in a beautiful setting, especially with little ones, you can't go past Willowbank

This review is for the animal exhibits, not the cultural events. Willowbank does seem like a good way to keep young children occupied, and they will be able to view all kinds of animals here (feeding the eels was a hit). We appreciate the "reserve" part, as Willowbank is involved in conservation efforts for native species--though little information about these efforts is included on signposts, giving it more of a zoo feel. Many of the animals are in small, crowded, dull, conditions, though--lots of dull-eyed, lethargic creatures in dirt cages. The exotics section is heartbreaking. The otters have a few low cement waterfalls. The highly social siamang gibbon is represented by a single mated pair in a cage too small for roaming or playing--and there's nothing for them to play with, anyway. There is no information about how Willowbank acquires its "exotics" or efforts it makes to care for their wellbeing; it seems, in the case of the gibbons, like a real rescue effort would involve one of the many protected national parks in Indonesia, Malaysia, or Thailand. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting or ignorant about the Willowbanks operations. We didn't see a single staff person on our way through the exhibit, or I would have asked for more information. It took me days to shake the sadness I felt seeing so many intelligent, trapped animals.

I recommend coming to see the Kiwi breeding. That is what this wildlife reserve is best known for. No need for a zoom lens as the animals get up close and personal.I think our guide Blair appeared to know a lot about the Madagascaran Ring-Tailed Lemur. This zoo has the potential to become a five star zoo with stronger marketing and tightened focus on visitor safety. I felt that visitor safety could be further enhanced by requiring visitors to wear thick leather gloves before allowing visitors to feed bananas and lettuce to feed lemurs. I remain thankful that I was innoculated with RabAvert and brought my own antiseptic wipes. In hindsight, I should have brought bigger bandages so I would need wait long for the staff to find an appropriate bandage. Overall, I felt for the well-prepared travel pro, this zoo remains an A-OK destination that I would recommend. No need to bring a zoom lens as the animals are close enough to touch.