Drusillas Park is a good but relatively small zoo about 30 mins from Brighton. We visited on a rainy February half term. There are plenty of animals to see but not those such as the big cats, elephants etc. Many varieties of lemurs, marmosets, meerkats and monkeys as well as penguins, farm animals, otters and owls kept us entertained – we got wet but the animals were in the warm and dry. There were some areas where we were in the dry such as the walk through bat enclosure and as we had dressed for bad weather we were all perfectly happy. We also had a ride round in the Thomas train and could have done this as often as we wished.
We had lunch in the Explorers café – a reasonable selection of items such as pizza, sandwiches, lasagne and fish and chips – popular with the children was a soft icecream machine with help yourself sauces and sprinkles which they could top up as often as they wanted.
As well as the animals Drusillas has a good and wide range of indoor and outdoor play areas. We started with the indoor soft play area which was large enough to take the half term children without feeling too crowded. Grandparents had coffee whilst the children played.
As the rain had then stopped we went to the extensive outdoor play area which is aimed at children up to 12 and a good time was had by all!
We had originally thought that a family ticket at £56 online or £66 at the door was expensive but the fact that there were plenty of other things to do besides looking at animals, all included in the price, meant we decided we had good value for money and would happily go back there especially as the animals all seemed well looked after and the play equipment, toilets etc were in good condition.
