Animal Park

The acclimatisation garden

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Jardin d’Acclimatation

Acclimatisation means the adaptation of living beings to changing climatic conditions. In order to research the subject, the Jardin Zoologique d’Acclimatation was founded on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, the city’ s famous forest. Opened by Emperor Napoleon III in 1860, the zoological garden soon became more popular, so that even after major losses due to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, visitors quickly flocked back to the park. With the opening of a small narrow-gauge railway, which still today connects the station Porte Maillot with the park, and other attractions, the Jardin d’Acclimatation developed into one of the city’s cultural centres. This direction was encouraged by renewed losses, starting with the First World War, and by general competition.

Today, the Jardin d’Acclimatation offers a beautiful garden, the Village aux Manèges, numerous playgrounds, various sports facilities, a puppet theatre, as well as animal enclosures. Apart from a large aviary and an interesting fallow deer enclosure, the Petite Ferme Normande is largely based on domestic breeds of farm animals, which is of great educational value, especially with regard to the city.

Tacot Express

The Village aux Manèges has two roller coasters as well as various children’s rides, a wave swinger, a Saltamontes with shoulder restraints and a cogs ride. The Tacot Express, a powered roller coaster from Soquet, is located directly on the square with the other rides. The ride starts with a curve, then goes up and down hills. After a right turn, the ride continues with some small hills and then a left turn to reach the highlight of the ride. With absurd rabiatism, the gradient into the tunnel follows, which is similarly surprising as the first drop of the Feuerdrache from Legoland Deutschland. With the speed now clearly present, another bend takes us in the direction of the station, just before the second round follows.

The Tacot Express seems to be a small, manageable ride, but it is full of surprises. In comparison to the more well-known rides of this type, for example the Blauer Enzian by Mack Rides, it trumps all along the line due to its compact design.

Papillon d’Alice

Almost opposite, the cars of the only Reverchon Junior Spinning Coaster are spinning themselves around in the Jardin d’Acclimatation. Papillon d’Alice is the name of this unusual ride and it is as unusual in appearance.  After a small curve, you climb the lift hill and pass a go-kart track. Above a building you make a small hairpin bend before passing a small dip. Continuing at a lofty height, you now drive along parallel to the station, before the rotation of the car is released after another 90° bend. Unfortunately, this is not as pronounced as with the bigger cousins of the same manufacturer, but for a small children’s roller coaster it is quite understandable. Two more long straight lines follow, until the biggest drop of the ride takes place after a block brake. Two directly connected hairpin bends lead into another smaller dip before it comes to the final dip on the way back to the station.

Although the roller coaster doesn’t look particularly spectacular or have any other exciting attributes, this little spinning coaster is first class. For a small children’s roller coaster there are at least far more duller layouts without any twisting effect, so that Papillon d’Alice can be seen as quite a cute ride for in between.

Dragon

A little bit away from the hustle and bustle, at the Jardin de Séoul, there is another roller coaster from Soquet: the Dragon. After a right turn you climb up the first friction wheel lift and another turn later the first drop of the ride takes place, at the end of which the next friction wheel lift is already waiting. Now you pass a left turn and drive through a tree, before, not surprisingly, another friction wheel lift comes up. The following drop is only used to build up the necessary speed for the next curve and therefore pushes you straight into it without paying any attention on your body. Clearly surprised you pass the station in order to make another lap.

Although the dragon is by far not as ingeniously absurd as the vintage car express in the front part of the Jardin d’Acclimatation, this ride is also quite convincing. The curve, which has been reworked after the construction, is just as strange as the very compact layout with the tree and its three lift hills.

Pictures Jardin d’Acclimatation

Conclusion Jardin d’Acclimatation

The Jardin d’Acclimatation is a great little leisure park in the most metaphorical sense, because no place seems to care as much about leisure as the garden does. Although there are some rides, these generally do not define the park and only make up a small part of the time spent here. The cultural offer of the park is relatively large and can entertain a family with children in connection with the animal enclosures and playgrounds throughout the year in a good and inexpensive way, because apart from the low entrance fee, you only pay a small price for every ride. Moreover, the prices of the gastronomy are also much more appropriate than generally in Paris, although you are not so far away from the actual tourist destinations.

 

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Jardin d'Acclimatation

A safari park without anything

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Badoca Safari Park

The Badoca Safari Park is one of the parks I know mainly through Parkscout.de, because a few years ago there was a report about a new Hafema Rafting ride. A few years later, I missed the entrance to the Safari Park; but who would have thought that the area was not properly developed and that the sandy path at the side of the road is the entrance to the park? For kilometres there was no exit and my navigation system wanted to send me on non-existent roads. Eventually I was able to turn around and a short time later I was standing in the car park of Badoca Safari Park.

At the cash desks I was then confronted with the opening and show times of the zoo and actually I would have had to turn back immediately, because both rafting and the safari tour would not have been feasible according to my schedule. Nevertheless I wanted to have a closer look at the Badoca Safari Park, and interestingly enough I had already explored half of the park before the official opening of the park.

It is really not a good omen when you can hardly show any animals as a safari park. The situation is even worse if you simply don’t use any of your spacious enclores. The two small aviaries should be seen as the highlight of the animal park, as birds are generally interesting and macaws are great to watch. You can also kill some time watching lemurs and wallabies.

Safari

The way over the bridge to the safari only makes sense if you really want to start the safari within a few minutes. It has a length of 45 minutes and is therefore about twice as long as Chessington Worlds of Adventures Zufari; however, due to the wooded area it is not as densely populated. If you can see animals at all is a question I cannot answer. Of course the safari is the most important part of a visit to Badoca Safari Park – there is not much more to do around here anyway.

Ilha dos grandes primatas

Despite this fact, the park still manages to create very long paths. The Ilha dos grandes primatas, for example, was placed not far from the high street and thus at the end of the world. There, two of the three large enclosures were equipped with animals and only in very small populations. Also, the gardener had apparently not been out and about for a long time, because somehow everything was growing wildly around here.

Rafting Africano

Rafting Africano is now advertising Coca Cola and apparently doesn’t do much else. The two Euros you have to pay for the trip can certainly be understood, but an opening time of 14h00 – 15h00 is not really understandable. Unfortunately the layout of the ride is hardly visible from the outside. However, the rafting offers the whirlpool well-known from this manufacturer and therefore a promising ride.

Bird of Prey

Last but not least I watched the first few minutes of the birds of prey show, where a few birds were presented under a lot of Portuguese blah-blah. Annoyed about the bad sound quality of the show and because of my lack of language skills I left the show early and made my way back to Porto Airport.

Pictures Badoca Safari Park

Conclusion Badoca Safari Park

The Badoca Safari Park certainly had its best times far behind. Lack of advertising, even just outside the park, missing animals and stupid opening hours of the attractions do not speak for the park. The relatively high entrance fee and the numerous up-charge offers leave an extremely bland aftertaste. Sure, a Segway safari is certainly fun, but why not include it in the entrance fee? At least the park had some potential at some point.

 

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Badoca Safari Park

Great Shows and a Rapid River

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Zoomarine

After leaving the water park Slide & Splash nearby Lagoa, I reached the animal and theme park Zoomarine around noon. It exists since 1991 and should not be confused with the Mundo Aquático park of the same name near Rome. Like similar parks, Zoomarine is characterised by a large number of shows, so that despite the manageable size of the park, you can easily spend a whole day here.

When I entered the park I knew from the beginning that I wanted to see at least one of the shows, because the entrance fee is by no means low in this park either. Since the show called Flying Colours was supposed to start in about 20 minutes the time was enough to explore the park a little bit. Soon I noticed a peculiarity of the park, because the attractions in the back of the park opened staggered one after the other and so did the only roller coaster of the park.

The parrot show then turned out to be very entertaining, instructive and quite well produced. The transitions were fluid, the story was stupid, but parrots who destroy a flat are just very funny and more or less reflect reality. It’s a bit strange that Zoomarine attempts to deal with the dangers of the shrinking habitat, only to sell some animal welfare bracelets shortly afterwards. Last but not least, the tree that has been impressively chopped down is hydraulically lifted back up into the sky.

In general, animal welfare activists will not be very satisfied with the animal husbandry in this park, so a visit is not recommended for this group of people. The few animals that are shown here in the enclosures, however, have enough space for their needs. The animals shown for the presentations have just as much space in generous aviaries or basins and even the dolphins can have it worse elsewhere with their lagoon. Of course, with the best will in the world this is definitely not ideal, especially as the dolphins’ lagoon can also be visited as an up-charge attraction.

Buffalo Coaster

As a roller coaster, Zoomarine offers small Zamperla Powered Coaster called the Buffalo Coaster. The ride with the Twin Helix layout is beautifully designed and is a lot of fun due to its lateral forces during the two helices; luckily it was only a three laps special.

Harakiri

If you follow the path further on, you will come to a junction where you can either continue up the mountain and see this year’s novelty, or go down to the Harakiri dinghy slide or the almost non-existent rafting, which should open at 2 pm. At that time I had basically achieved my goal, but I decided to take the Rapid River as well. Because the Era T-Rex was not supposed to open for half an hour I took a closer look at the front section of the park.

Aceanus

Passing some animal enclosures I went into the aquarium Aceanus, which is quite inconspicuous from the outside. It is very close to the Sea Life centres, apart from the missing design and the very dark and exclusively blue corridors. The aquariums were all large and well populated, but the highlight here is the huge tank towards the end of the run, which can be seen from three sides. This is where you could spot some sharks.

Era T-Rex

Back in the daylight I quickly looked at the other enclosures before I decided against the pirate-style sea lion show called Wonderland and walked towards the rapid ride. Prior to this, I took a closer look at the tent of the Era T-Rex, which looked rather unsuitable from the outside. The inside turned out to be a quite solid museum with some animatronics in which guided tours take place regularly. Since I didn’t want to wait for the next group I joined another group that was already advanced in the guided tour.

Rapid River

Next, I headed straight towards the Rapid River, whose entrance is located halfway down the dinghy slide. You can only find it through the signs in Zoomarine, but not on the notes of the individual opening hours of the rides, nor on the park map. Nevertheless, the ride was actually open and so it didn’t take long until I was sitting in one of the round boats.

To be honest, I didn’t expect much and the waterfall visible from the outside only looked as if it would, like in other parks, wet the boat a little bit, if at all, by splashes. But as it turned out after the first few meters of the ride, this was a very wrong estimation, because in fact this small passage is enough to wet at least half of the passengers due to the rotation of the boat. The following curvy stretch is then unfortunately free of any rapids and surprises, but nevertheless, the beautiful design and the rather less beautiful foam tunnel provide enough elements to distract you and shortly afterwards to introduce the great finale. The similarities with the dark ride Bubbleworks from Chessington World of Adventures are not to be denied, but the water jets end here all inside the boat. Shortly afterwards the lift and the end of the ride is reached.

The ride, built by L&T Systems, is a magnificent and, above all, wet pleasure which, once you are in the park, should not be missed. A bit annoying is the late opening time of the ride and the resulting time spent at the park.

Zoomarine Beach

Apart from the individual shows, of which I unfortunately didn’t watch any more, you can also visit the small water park Zoomarine Beach and test the two water slides and the large wave pool. In addition to that, the park also offers a 4D cinema with a film about turtles, a nicely designed carousel, a small boat swing and a Ferris wheel.

Pictures Zoomarine

Conclusion Zoomarine

Zoomarine is a park that looks quite expensive in the first place, especially if you visit it just for its roller coaster. However, if you take the time to see the shows, the aquarium and the attractions that open later, Zoomarine is a good park where the price/quality ratio is good.

 

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Zoomarine Algarve