A Visit to Woburn Safari Park.

Back in May we visited the rather fab Woburn Safari Park. It's taken me a little while to write this post (doh, stating the obvious there!), I had a few camera issues and uploading all the pictures........I have now managed to sort myself out and hope you'll like reading about our day and enjoy the many pictures that we took.

I'm not sure if you remember or whether you read my blog regularly but it's become a little tradition now that for Alfie's birthday we have a trip out and it seems that his choice is generally animal related, this year it was all about the safari experience. I cannot begin to explain how excited Alfie is when he knows we are off out to a zoo, he just loves it so much. We are lucky that we live close to several zoos/safari parks so we never have to travel that far to get to one, Woburn took us around an hour to get to and it was a fairly non eventful journey so made it in good time to fully enjoy the day. We were lucky to be able to go during the week, out of school holidays so I had a feeling it was going to be fairly quiet.

I have been to Woburn  before but many, many years ago so could only really remember the safari part of it and not much else so I was looking forward to seeing what it is like nowadays.

So we arrived and Alfie as always was pretty excited about all the animals he was going to see. It took a while for us to convince him that he was going to be safe in the car while driving into the enclosures, I did spend some time explaining that we stay in the car and look at the animals roaming free while staying in the car! We were really lucky with the weather and it was actually nice and warm so we had some fab views while we were following the track around the driving safari. We were able to stop for several minutes and look for the animals, we absolutely loved seeing the bears and their little baby.....honestly so blimming cute. 

I think, no I know that Alfie was most looking forward to seeing the lions and the giraffes, but mostly the lions! He actually had his day made when the females were feasting on a carcass of some sort. I don't know what it is with him at the moment but he's fascinated by what animals eat and seeing them ripping apart a carcass was of particular interest to him.......we had to park up and observe for several minutes!! 

I loved that the giraffes would just stroll in front of us minding their own business. I love watching them, they are just so elegant and majestic. 

We spent the most time in the monkey enclosure. This was my favourite part of the trip. They are always such cheeky little things and these dudes were no different. They completely loved the bus that was in front of us, I lost count how many were on it at one point! They seemed to avoid our car for quite sometime but once we were in the middle of the monkey enclosure we did find a few visitors sitting on our car roof and wing mirror! Hilarious. Alfie not so impressed and kept telling the naughty monkeys to 'shoo shoo', bless him.

After all of the excitement of the car safari (which took around 90 minutes) we then parked up and headed over to the foot safari. There was lots to see and I really liked the lay out of the park. It's not at all like I remember when we visited, but then it was a long time ago! It appeared that there were lots of improvements being made within the foot safari which once complete will look great, definitely a reason to head back and check it out.

Going around the foot safari was alot of fun for Elarna as driving around she couldn't really see out of the window so being up close and personal for her was fascinating. 

In between exploring we stopped for a bite to eat at the cafe towards the entrance. For convenience food it was actually pretty good, sometimes these things can be so disappointing but at Woburn we felt it was fairly decent and not a bad price. There were 3 bouncy castles just around the corner from the gift shop (forgot to take a picture of these sadly) but these were a very handy little diversion when Alfie got a bit restless. After having a bounce we continued to walk around looking at all the other animals.

Before we went to the lemur enclosure we went to the soft play that is inclusive in the ticket price. This is fab, although it consisted mainly of 3 different slides and a couple of ball pools it kept Alfie entertained for ages. There is also a lovely little baby/toddler section that I was able to let Elarna loose in so a win, win all around.

We then wandered over to the lemur enclosure, sadly pushchairs aren't allowed and since Elarna was chilling out Adi took Alfie into it and walked around. Alfie loved it and was even allowed to stroke one. Adi also managed to get some gorgeous photos of them. Lemurs are proper photogenic little things aren't they, right little posers!

After exploring the foot safari we made our way back up to the main part of the park and the lake. As the weather was nice and it was fairly quiet Adi took Alfie for a spin around the lake on a swan boat. I'm not sure who had more fun, Alfie or Daddy!

Elarna and I watched Daddy and Alfie with much amusement before watching the meerkats having a whale of a time.Again, we love these little creatures, they capture your attention and are just wonderful to watch. 

Before heading home we paid a trip to the gift shop (of course) and I allowed to choose a gift for him and Elarna, he was actually pretty well behaved and he chose a lemur soft toy for himself and a zebra for Elarna, very cute! We then popped into the little reptile centre which had a lovely selection of reptiles. Once again Alfie telling us he wanted a corn snake (not happening) and wanting to stroke the snake. The lady in the centre was really helpful and informative and showed Alfie the snakes and got a scorpion out, which he still talks about today! After this we managed to watch the parrot show, this was great, really interesting and lovely to see how the parrots responded to the keepers.

We had an absolutely fab day. I do love spending time with the kids and seeing the enjoyment in their faces. We will definitely be heading back to Woburn at some point soon, I don't think it's something that would get tiresome as you would see something different at each visit. I would advise going out of school holidays if you can as it is lots quieter, we are not going to be as lucky come September so will have to get used to going during peak times. Woburn is great for children and adults alike, there is alot to see and it's lovely to walk around. If you haven't been go, go, go!!!

Have you been to Woburn and did you have a fab time like we did? 

* Please note we were kindly given a family entry free of charge in exchange for an honest and unbiased post. All thoughts and opions are that of my own.