The Good Zoo is a good zoo for children

The Good Zoo is located at Oglebay Resort in Wheeling, West Virginia. It is a very small zoo geared toward guests visiting Oglebay, but it can be a great zoo for young families who want to see exotic animals without spending the entire day walking through a large, urban zoo.

For most of us Ohioans, Oglebay is a household word. The 1,700-acre Oglebay Resort and Conference Center just outside of Wheeling offers summer and winter activities and is well-known for its Christmas Festival of Lights.

Visiting The Good Zoo

We arrived at the zoo around lunchtime and purchased our tickets. The Good Zoo is priced for families at just $14 for adults and $10 for children (parking is free).

We packed a picnic lunch and had no problem entering with our sandwiches and drinks. It appeared as though they do offer a lunch counter, but it was not open on the day we visited. We had no competition for the picnic table space, I’m not sure what a normal weekend is like, but a Friday, while school is in session, was definitely quiet.

I loved this zoo because it’s highly walkable for little kids. We had the double stroller with us, but for our age of kids, we wouldn’t have required it. And because the zoo is in a park-like and hilly setting, many of the areas and walkways were shaded! (Thank you, thank you- no sunscreen required)!

The Good Zoo offers only 50 species of animals, but what I enjoyed about it was you could get through it in a day and didn’t feel rushed to get from one thing to the next. We all know that the attention span of a 2 and 4-year-old is about 2 hours TOPS, and we were able to fully see the zoo (and eat lunch) in about that time frame.

The Australian area has a gated space where you can walk in with the kangaroos. ?=The adjoined Lorikeet Landing was something I was really looking forward to, but it wasn’t open on our visit. Waaa waaaa.

The Good Zoo also has cheetahs, farm animals, and a red panda! We’ve been learning about the continents in homeschool and this trip helped cement some of those geography concepts while also reminding our kids what kind of fun (and funny) animals live in different parts of the world.

Me: “So kids, what was your favorite part of the zoo?”

J: The train…and the playground

O: The hills-and those monkeys things. (the tamarins)

C: The elephants!!! (there weren’t any elephants!)

Ah, another day of making memories. Yes, the Good Zoo is a good zoo for children!

What’s your favorite zoo?

If you don’t want to stay at the Oglebay Resort (it’s difficult to find rooms for 6!), we recently stayed at the Springhill Suites by Marriott Wheeling Triadelphi, which is only a short drive from the Good Zoo.

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