Nadia S.
Yelp
We went to Zoo Negara as we had heard rave reviews from other parent friends. One even said it was better than Singapore Zoo (in terms of walkability at least). Since the pandas were in town, we decided, let's do it.
We thought we would be one of the first there, since we arrived at 8.45 am, 15 minutes before official opening hours, but we weren't. The parking lot was already filled with lots of other like minded people, even more kiasu than us, so we had to park a little further away than we would have liked.
However, once we got to the entrance, it only took about 5 minutes to get our tickets and we were off. Note: Tickets are RM 35 for those with MyKad and free for children below 3. However, as we had wanted to see the pandas too, we had to pay RM 54 each, a little steep but ah well. All in the name of education.
I am very happy to report that all the animals seemed happy and well fed. At the monkeys section, the cages were huge, and space aplenty for them to roam around and hang from the branches of the trees. Even the birds enjoyed huge spaces. We managed to catch the Multi-Animal Show, which was actually pretty fun. The facilitator spoke in both Bahasa and English, and managed to capture the crowd's attention. It went on a little too long for our toddler's attention span, but for adults, not a problem at all.
The safari animal section was great. It actually resembled something like the vast ladnscapes of Africa. My daughter was extremly excited about the giraffes being in close proximity. The pandas were great too. We got a little irritated with some people who didn't seem to understand that they should not use flash cameras (need scarier staff there, maybe), but other than that, we enjoyed seeing them live and well, albeit for only 15 minutes (that's the amount of time you're allowed inside the panda area).
All in all, a great outing for the family. We spent something close to 5 hours there and didn't even realise it. Two thumbs up!