Douglas, Isle Of Man, Curraghs Wildlife Park Review

Overall Rating

Very cheap, lovely setting, good range of animals, good enclosures, saw the late Fred Dibnah while there.

No big animals - lions, tigers or elephants or bears etc.

This is one of my favourite wildlife parks or zoos anywhere.
It well and truly is superb.
The wildlife park area is divided into 6 (or 7)different areas each displaying animals from that particular continent. They are....
1.South America
The very first area and possibly the smallest. It comes straight after entering. Your first animal is the Humbolt Penguins waddling about and swimming in their nice, big and clean pool. After this you go into a large and spacious paddock home to Llamas and Emus as well as some waterfowl. This is partially walk through with only low stand-off barriers around the path.
2. Flooded Forest
The largest area? Depicting the Amazxon the very first attraction is a large paddock complete with pond where the gorgeous Capybara live. For those of you who don't know they are the world's largest rodent and you can actually touch them here! There are other grazing animals here. You then enter the wood where there are butterfly and nature trails as well as macaws. There are some monkeys and birds here. Coming out you discover you are on a massive lake home to thousand of breeds of waterfowl and the truly wonderful scarlet ibis. In the middle is a large island which is home to the spider monkeys. It was fun watching them mess about on their interesting climbing frame. They also had a small area on land.
3. North American Trail
The shortest area this is home to only two exhibits-North American River Otters(Canadian Otters) and Racoons which are housed well. It is a pleasant walk all through woodland with informative signs.

4. The Outback
The main exhibit of this is a walk-through aviary. These were of the first walk-through exhibits in Britain. This massive aviary is home to one special bird-the Laughing Kookabura a gorgeous and hillarious bird. The paddock is home to the bouncing wallabies, kangaroos and the dinosaur-like bird Cassowary. There is also a lake home to some Black Swans

5. Europe
Another smallish area the main attraction here are the amazing Lynx with a spacious compound and the beavers in his large 'pond. Other animals here include the European or British Otter buy these were shy and never came out!

6. Africa
I do not remember much of this area but I think it was like the South America area - a spacious walk through paddock. I remember a large lake home to a group of pelicans.

As well as these there a few other animals attractions.
The childrens farm is a reasonable size home to donkeys and goats in suitably sized paddocks.

The Ark and Islands
The larger of the two is islands a attraction showing animals which are confined to islands-including Ring and Red Ruffed Lemurs who were in a well sized walk through enclosure-but we never saw them! The Ark is in the pond and is home to a range on animals, many resuces including parrots and snakes all housed comfortably

Facilities
There is a gift shop which is quite reasonably priced which I can only vaguely remember. The cafe' was very nice and reasonably priced and looked out on the stunning scarlet ibis.
The railway is minature and costs 50p a ride which is very reasonable as you get a kilometre long run through the paddocks. I saw Fred Dibnah here!
The Close Beg has a small soft play area for children home to a ball pool and a few other things and there is a playground behind the cafe. There are some animal feeding times I can only remember the penguin otter and lynx feeds

Price:
An extremely reasonable 5 pounds for adults and &pouns;£2.50 for kids.This may have gone up slighlty but I am not sure

Overall
This is a wonderful park very interesting and reasonably priced-well worth going to if you are on the Isle of Man