“We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” – Anonymous
We visited West Midland Safari Park in August 2019. It was a great family daylong trip.
This park was opened to public in 1973. The park holds over 150+ species of animals.
With around 750,000+ annual visitors, this is a must-see place in Birmingham/England. The kids would really love this place, for sure.
We started our trip from Nottingham, it was around 2 hours (82 Miles) to the Safari park by car.
Its highly recommended to take your vehicle while visiting this place as you will get a chance to do the Safari Drive-Through using your vehicle (travel distance of around 4 miles), which is a unique experience.
For those who want to avoid driving by yourself, you can take the safari mini bus/coaches provided by the park authorities (it comes with a cost).
Typically, we see animals in zoo and many of us don’t feel comfortable with the way animals are kept inside the cages. But here in WMSP, the animals (like camels, zebras, antelope, rhinos and many others) are given freedom to roam around and they indeed have plenty of free space to move.
Park also permits visitors to feed the animals when they come near your vehicle, personally am not sure if this is a good and safe option.
The first part of the safari had rhinos, zebras and antelope. Also, I personally feel like there should be more space/ground for the lions and the Tigers.
Each of the areas were separated with gates to ensure that the animals are in the right enclosures and this also ensures a proper flow of traffic/vehicles within each section.
The park is divided into different sections like below:
- African Plains
- The Grasslands
- Wild Woods
- Wild Asia and Realm of the Indian Rhino
- White Tiger Ridge
- Cheetah Plains
- African Wild Dog Reserve
- Realm of the Lion s
- Kingdom of the White Lions
- Eurasian Reserve and Tiger Reserve
- Elephant Valley and so on…
Within the same campus, there are also some interesting sections like:
- Ice Age
- Land of Living Dinosaurs
- Discovery trail
- Reptile World and so on…
Apart from all the above, there are also some daily shows like:
- Penguin feed
- Friendly Animal Encounter
- Sea Lion Show
- Penguin feed
- Meerkat feed
- Sea lion show
- Lemur Talk
I would certainly recommend to check the daily show timings so that you can plan your entire day trip accordingly.
Ticket Cost:
It will be good to visit the park website to know the Park opening days.
You can buy the tickets on line as well (which gives you some discount) : https://web.wmsp.co.uk/tickets/index.php
Adults (16-64) : 24 £
Children (3-15) : 19 £
Concessions (Senior 65+ and Students) : 22 £
Under 3’s : Free
Animal Food : 3.50 £
Guide Book : 5 £
You can buy tickets in the park itself and all major card types are accepted here.
Seems the ticket price includes a free return trip, which is a great option. Please see more details here : https://www.wmsp.co.uk/free-return-ticket/
However, once you’ve got into the safari park, there are a lot of hidden costs, in case if you want to do everything the park has to offer.
Food Options:
There are plenty of options for food within the park , including fully fledged restaurants. Food is slightly costly. You can carry it from home as well.
We have seen many families who brought food from home and was having their lunch under a tree shade. Of course, this is also a different experience. Typically, this place can be considered as an ideal place for a proper day trip.
Entertainment rides (Fairground) / Adventure Theme park:
There are also options like Roller coaster, Carousel and so on. Based on the height of the kids, there are different set of rides.
We didn’t do those rides and hence am not sure how safe it was for the kids.
Again, there are special tickets for this ride.
The cost for a multi-ride wristband to allow you on all the rides was £14.50 for an adult and £12.50 for a child (up to 15 years). If its late when you reach the fairgrounds, I would suggest that the Multi trip might not be worth enough. In such cases, you can also buy tickets for individual rides.
Rides in the Adventure Theme Park are closed for winter season and typically opened sometime in the mid of February
Getting there:
Almost everyone comes in their own vehicle, obviously, to drive through the animal park, but there is a mini-bus tours as well. If taking this option, get the train to Kidderminster (40 minutes from Birmingham, frequent departures, or two-and-a-half hours from London Euston, frequent departures but with two changes), then a local bus to the safari park.
Cleanliness:
Overall the campus was very clean.
There are toilets (Free) provided in different parts of the entire park and the toilets were clean.
The animals are also kept in very clean environment, thanks to the excellent dedication of the staff.
Summary:
1. West Midland Safari park (WMSP) is quite a good day out (around 6 hours or so) for the family especially children.
The only suggestion will be to avoid this place during the school vacation or Bank holiday time. It would be extremely crowded during the vacation time where you will have to spend most of your time in the traffic / queues (bumper to bumper) inside the safari park.
2. Children will get a chance to see the animals (very closely) which they know only from books and the good thing is that the animals are kept in a better condition than that in zoo.
3. Ticket price which includes a free return ticket seems to be reasonable one.
4. If possible, try to bring food /snacks from home.
5. There are also options to buy Annual Safari passes.
6. Whether you are arriving by car, coach or minibus, there are no parking charges for the guests!
7. In case if your vehicle gets breakdown or over heated, don’t panic. The Safari park staff (wardens) will be always moving around the routes and they will come for an immediate help.
