DierenPark Amersfoort (The Zoo)

If you visit Amersfoort with kids, the DierenPark (zoo) should be at the top of your must-see list.  In fact, this zoo is so cool I was sometimes more excited to go than the kids were.  It’s so much more than a typical zoo – it has enclosures where you walk above the animals, slides and tunnels everywhere, huge playgrounds, a Disneyesque magical feel and the grounds are huge – it took us 6+ hours over the course of three visits to see the whole thing.

The zoo is located on the southwest side of Amersfoort and was about a 15-20 minute bike ride from our house.  We bought an annual weekday pass to the zoo because if you visit more than one time it’s a better deal and we’ve definitely gotten our money’s worth out of the pass ($37 for an adult, $32 for Jack and Ben was free).  Much better than $100/day per person at an actual Disney park.

 

The Animal Experience

As soon as you enter the zoo grounds, you can tell you’re not in a normal zoo.  When I think of a typical zoo, I don’t picture interactive exhibits where you can climb, slide and crawl around the animal exhibits.  I also don’t picture animal habitats where there are no fences or nets separating you from some monkeys and sloths.  The grounds are lush and full of huge trees, flowers, and plants that were somehow all green even though everything outside the zoo is dead because there is an extreme drought in Amersfoort (it didn’t rain the first 6 weeks we were here!!).

 

 

 

The first animal exhibit you encounter is a giant walk-in bird cage.  What you don’t expect (at least if you’re me and used to the Madison and Milwaukee zoo’s) is to see a bunch of kids climbing up a catwalk and then onto a bunch of ropes and balance beams as they climb through the bird cage and then exit by sliding down a covered tube slide at the other end of the exhibit.  Brian and I were practically fighting over who got to follow Jack through the obstacle course since Ben was too little to navigate most of it.

 

 

On our third visit to the zoo I let Ben try some of the balance beam/rope netting walkways that are designed for kids 3+ (Ben’s just under 2 years old). He did pretty good – only falling off twice on this one. Good thing the nets were there or he would have plopped in the water. This wasn’t true for this whole obstacle though. I was glad I followed him and just didn’t let him go with Jack because there were areas with slippery stones (and no netting) so Ben could have easily fallen in the water.

 

 

This tiger below was laying down over by the pillars in the background when the boys walked up. He saw them, got up, and walked over – I presume to try and eat Ben – and then went back to his resting spot. I also loved the way all the habitats were designed. This one reminded me of a deserted palace that had been reclaimed by the jungle and the tigers. You know…just like in real life :).

 

 

There were tunnels and passageways like this all over the park for the kids to explore. Often in the middle of the tunnel there would be a little window into an animal exhibit. The funny part is that the kids would disappear into the tunnel and then as the parent you’re standing outside the tunnel wondering “Where did my kid go?” since the tunnels always came out in different spots.  All of these features were designed specifically for kids in that the ceilings were low and some of the passageways were difficult for adults to navigate.

 

 

One of my favorite habitats is what I deemed “Monkey Island”.  This island had a bunch of cute little monkeys hopping around on a boat, a little house and a bunch of ropes/trees.  Although the monkey’s couldn’t get off the island, you could get pretty close on the shore to look at them and I wondered how often the monkeys tried to figure out a way to use that boat to escape.

 

 

One strange part of the zoo was the “Dinosaur Park”.  Yes…there was a huge area dedicated to dinosaurs.  It took me awhile to explain to Jack before we got there that the dinosaurs were not going to be real, and I still don’t think he actually understood until we started to see the giant (and in some cases small) replicas.  It was still pretty cool.  When you entered the park it looked like the entrance to Jurassic Park and they were even playing the Jurassic Park theme music.  You basically walked along several trails and saw various dinosaur replicas and they had roars and other dinosaur noises playing on speakers that were probably hidden in rocks or random stumps.  I think Ben thought they were all real because he kept making roaring noises and looking very excited every time we came upon a new one.

 

 

 

The Playgrounds

Just when I think playgrounds in the Netherlands can’t get any cooler, we find this one.  This is the best one so far.  In fact, it’s so great, I wanted to kick all the kids off it and make it into an American Ninja Warrior course and race Brian through it.  Or pretend it’s the tree house from the movie Swiss Family Robinson (this is a classic – to this day, I still want to live in that tree house).  Jack was so excited to climb up that he literally left us in the dust and we didn’t see him again for 5 minutes until he yelled out from the top “Mom – this is so great!!!”.

 

 

The Rides

Little kids love mini trains, boats, go-carts, etc.  The zoo has all of these and a carousel – but be prepared to pay an extra 1 euro per person to ride them.  However, like most parents, we succumbed because our kids told us that if we didn’t let them ride the train/boats/go-carts they would most certainly die on the spot.

 

 

 

 

The boats.  Ugh.  These were my least favorite.  When I saw the boats noted on the zoo map I thought they would move on their own and run on a track around something that resembled a lazy river.  Not.  They were actual paddle boats that you had to paddle yourself through the canal.  What they didn’t tell you is that if you have two adults weighing a combined 300+ lbs sitting in the back seats and two kids weighing a combined 70 lbs sitting in the front seats, your boat will go nowhere.  So, one of the adults then needs to paddle all by themselves while the other one free loads with the kids in the front seats.  Oh, and the river is long.  We took turns – with Brian doing about 75% of the work.  The good part?  See that island in the picture below?  There were monkey’s on it and they would cross over the river in these net bridges (you can see one on the left side of the picture), so you were passing directly underneath the monkeys which was cool.  You also got to pass very close to giraffe’s and zebras alongside the river.

 

 

Watching Jack drive this little electric go-cart around actually made me kind of nostalgic.  He handled it like a pro and he looked so much bigger than 4.5 when he turned sharply around the corners, avoided other kids, and proceeded to dominate the go-cart track.  Maybe we have a future NASCAR driver in the making…

 

 

The zoo is one of my favorite spots in Amersfoort.  The kids loved it every time we went and I loved it when they were smiling, excited and happy.