Last Updated on 2 April 2026 by Colette
West Midlands Safari Park has been on my list of places to go for a few years now – mainly as they are home to the largest pod of hippos in the UK. We finally bit the bullet and planned a trip for the Easter holidays, taking a chance on the weather being kind to us despite the fact it was forecast rain.
West Midlands Safari Park is a couple of hours drive from Manchester so we got ourselves up and out having booked our safari entrance tickets for 11am. We arrived on site pretty much just on time for the start of our slot – you’re given a 30 minute window which does allow for some flexibility! Dave and the girls jumped out to go to the toilet and then we joined the safari queue. The queue itself took quite a long time (almost half an hour!) – they didn’t seem to be being overly efficient at getting people through the gates but I do wonder if this was perhaps people buying food and guide books as when it was our turn, we got straight through.
The Safari Drive-Through was absolutely the highlight of the day – it took us well over 2 hours to get round in part due to us taking plenty of time to stop and look at the animals and also because the queue to get into and around the Carnivore Reserves took forever. There are lots of air lock gates to pass through which takes quite a while, but also manages the flow of traffic through the area.
We loved how close lots of the animals were throughout the drive through safari – many coming right up to the car (watching the giraffes through the panoramic sunroof was pretty cool!). When your 14yr old boy tells you “This is so cool!” – you know you’ve done ok.
The walk through section of West Midlands Safari Park was less exciting – we were lucky enough to catch the end of the penguin feeding at Penguin Cove, we enjoyed getting another chance to see the lions and of course the hippos were the main attraction for me but otherwise it felt a bit more theme park than zoo which I didn’t love. Essentially the drive through safari is the most important bit of your visit and the walk through is just a bit of a bonus to stretch your legs!
All in we had a cracking day out and were really glad we’d finally got round to visiting!
Tips for visiting West Midlands Safari Park
The cheapest tickets for West Midlands Safari park are available on line. We paid £127.50 for our family of five which felt like pretty good value to be honest.
Your ticket price comes with a free return within six months – but this can’t be used during the school holidays typically.
Make sure you go to the toilet before you enter the queue for the safari – you won’t be getting out of the car again once you go through the gates and it can take around two hours to get round the park
Pack snacks – again, the actual safari part of your visit can take a couple of hours so having snacks and drinks at the ready is vital! (We actually ate our picnic lunch in the car as we were doing the safari!)
Your safari slot is pre-booked to manage the flow of people through the safari. We chose to book our slot for arrival meaning we could do the safari first before going to wander around the rest of the park at our leisure. I did wonder if we had booked our safari for later in the day, if the route would have been quieter.
It’s worth bearing in mind that the safari can take a long time so if you’ve already driven over two hours to get to the park like we had, you might want the chance to get out and stretch your legs first – luckily our kids are used to long drives so didn’t mind a quick hop out to go to the toilet and then straight into the safari.
Unlike another safari park we’ve been to in the past, you do only get one chance to drive through the safari route so make sure you take your time!
The four-mile self-drive safari is a one way system with two lanes – in theory the left is a slower lane where you can stop to watch the animals and the right lane is a little quicker where you can basically over take slower or stopped drivers.
You can buy animal feed at the entrance to the safari – we didn’t bother but we saw lots of other people feeding the animals in front of us. I think the animals are so used to being fed by visitors that they will often come to your window anyway (check out this video!).
You can purchase a guide book at the entrance to the safari – I think this was a fiver. We didn’t bother but wished we had as much of the safari isn’t sign posted so it would have been helpful to know more about the animals beyond “Oh look that’s a rhino” or “what on earth is that?”
Because the drive-thru safari route is a private road and you’re driving so slowly, you don’t officially have to wear your seatbelts which means little ones are free to move around the car to get the best view or even to sit on your lap in the front. In practice we found that, because our three are bigger, if they unfastened their seatbelts, it just meant the car kept pinging warnings at us!
There are no monkeys in the safari route so you don’t need to worry about your windscreen wipers being pulled off but you are advised to remove externally mounted items such as spare wheels.
If you are driving a soft top car, you must take a separate route which avoids the Carnivore Reserves.
There is an “off road” route through the Carnivore Reserves which we didn’t take but wished we had as the lions happened to be really close to that area at the time – of course this is just pure chance and you can never guarantee whereabouts the animals are going to be!
West Midland Safari Park have a range of luxury lodges which back onto the safari park meaning you can stay on site and watch your favourite animal from the comfort of your own balcony – these are not cheap by any means but what a treat for a special occasion! (Check out this video of the tiger lodge!)
One of the main reasons for our visit was to see the hippos – West Mids Safari Park has the largest pod of common hippos in the UK (yes I’m a total hippo nerd). I stood and watched the hippos at Hippo Lakes for ages – they did nothing more than lie in the mud and wiggle their ears but I was very happy. I did wonder if perhaps you’d have a better chance of seeing hippo activity at other times of the day but someone told me they’d visited the hippos several times now and never seen them in any other position. The hippos are currently having a new home built and with that will be a Hippo Lodge where you’ll be able to watch the hippos do absolutely nothing all day long! Book me in now please!
There’s a range of adventure theme park / fair ground rides in the main part of the park – we pretty much avoided these and just walked straight past them (having already told them kids that wasn’t what we were there for) however if you do want to use them you can buy ride wristbands to get the best prices – the cheapest prices for ride tickets are available if you book online ahead of time.
You can pre-book a selection of special experiences available at West Midlands Safari Park including feeding the giraffes and looking after the lions! These must be pre-booked.
The African Walking Trail section allows you to walk up to see the giraffes, elephants and rhino on foot – this is an uphill trail and we wished we hadn’t bothered as we’d seen the animals much closer from the car! Of course this all depends on whereabouts the animals are on the day so you might find you get a really good view at another time.
There is a themed children’s play area towards the back of the walk-through area of West Midlands Safari Park, it’s not huge and my kids were definitely too big to be interested but its a chance for little ones to burn off some energy!
Download the West Midlands Safari app before your visit – I didn’t even know it existed until I was writing this post but the interactive map would have been handy and it also means you can stay updated on daily talk times to help you plan your visit (we didn’t go to any talks and only just caught the penguin feeding by accident!)
There’s plenty of options for food and drink on site but I can’t comment on the pricing or quality of these – we had packed drinks and a picnic with the intention of avoiding spending any money at all on site!
That’s everything I can think of for now but if you’ve got questions about visiting West Midlands Safari Park, drop me a note in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer! We will of course be visiting again later this year to make the most of our “free return” so I’ll update then if anything else comes to mind.
Have a read of these posts next:
If you have enjoyed this post and found it helpful, here are a few ways you can say thanks and support We’re going on an adventure:
Click here to buy me a virtual coffee – it’s like a little tip jar but with caffeine!
I’d love for you to tag me in any photos of your adventures on Social Media if one of my posts has inspired you to visit
Click here to leave We’re going on an adventure a Google Review
Share this post with your friends – you’ll be helping me and them!
Follow We’re going on an adventure on Facebook or Instagram
