Yesterday we visited Wildwood Kent, this is our review from a SEND perspective.
I saw a post on Instagram from Sensational Learning With Penguin about their day at WildWood Kent. I had not heard of this park before and after reading their blog post review I promptly added it to our list of places to visit in the summer holidays.
About The Park
The park is near Herne Bay, Kent. Set in a lovely woodland area it specialises in animals native to the UK. Some of these animals we have never really seen before at other zoos. Through the WildWood Trust the park focuses on protection and conservation and rewilding british wildlife.
Currently, booking has to be made in advance and you are asked to select an arrival time slot. This allows the park to limit numbers on site spread out visitors. Although you pre-book your time slot you don’t pay for your tickets until you arrive. There are free carers tickets available and further details of their disabled access policy is available here
Hand sanitiser stations are available throughout the park and a one way system is in operation. There are Portaloos available in addition to the main toilets. This helps maintains the one way system.
Our only concern with the one way system was how we would get out to the car park quickly if we needed to. Often if George or Faye become overwhelmed one of us takes them back to the car for quiet time to avoid a meltdown. Fortunately, we didn’t need to find a solution to this problem during this visit.
Animals
There are over 200 different animals at the park from snakes and bats to bears, wolves, bison and deers. Despite some of them hiding we weren’t disappointed at all.
There are colourful information signs at each enclosure to tell you about each animal. Live talks are not taking place at the moment but the talks are all pre-recorded and available to watch online.
The bears were everyone’s favourite and I would have paid the entrance fee to see them alone. There are ground level viewing points for the bears or you can use the overhead viewing point. For the extra adventurous visitor you can walk across a rope bridge over their enclosure. We loved watching them playing in the waterfall.
There is a similar set up for the wolves, which were another favourite of ours. There is an overhead viewing point as well as a ground level viewing point to get up close.
Eating and Shopping Facilities
Picnic benches are scattered throughout the park. We waited until the end to eat next to the outdoor play area, there are picnic benches and a cafe offering a selection of hot food and drinks. We bought some Nachos and dips and hot drinks to eat with the picnic we had brought with us. Once we had eaten the kids enjoyed letting off steam in the play area.
The gift shop is not yet open to the public, instead there is a small selection of gifts available outside the shop and somebody to assist you with any purchases.
We arrived at 10am and left at around 2pm. We had enough time afterwards to drive to the nearby Herne Bay Beachfront and enjoyed paddling in the sea, ice cream and chips on the beach for tea. The beach here is small and very quiet so not too crowded or overwhelming.
I’m so happy to see you had a fab day at Wildwood! Herne Bay is lovely too, great idea to pop up there afterwards and have chips on the beach x
Thanks for the recommendation, such a good find.