Membership Appreciation Night at Rosamond Gifford Zoo

Rosamond Gifford Zoo is our local zoo in Syracuse, New York.  We planned to become members but recently they launched an amazing military program. Veterans, of which my husband is one, and their families can get in FREE when they visit the zoo. Since this means we would not need to be members, we decided to use the money to “adopt an animal.” This means you get your name on the wall, a fact sheet, and a stuffed animal of your adopted animal. My daughters chose the Red Panda. Because we adopted an animal, we were also invited to the Membership Appreciation Night on June 11th, 2014.

What a fun night! When we signed in they gave each of us a ticket for a free drink, popcorn, and ice cream! The restaurant was open which was good since it was 5:30pm and we had two hungry little girls. We grabbed some chicken fingers, burger, and fries to share and the food did not disappoint. It is always good there. There was also a raffle, which we threw $20 in to but didn’t win anything. No big deal at all as it went right to the animals and we are fine with that! (The behind the scenes experience would have been amazing to win though!)

They had a penguin feeding at 6:00pm so we headed over there with our popcorn. The girls loved it! They got right up against the glass and enjoyed seeing them catch the fish. We had seen the penguins there before of course, but never during feeding. Next stop was the barn area. This is my husband’s favorite part because they have alpacas. We got to pet them and then my daughter got to learn how to milk a cow. That is one of her favorite exhibits and she is getting really good at it! At 6:30pm there was an elephant talk so we headed over to that section. My oldest really loved the elephant and kept telling me she wanted to ride on her. What a surprise when after the show they brought the elephant around and let everyone touch her. My older daughter said “She felt hard mommy!” My youngest squealed with excitement when she got to touch the elephant!

We decided to use the time before the raffle winners were announced to check out the inside of the zoo. It was getting dark and windy since a storm seemed to be coming. We saw the lions, lemurs, monkeys, and the fossa which are some of my oldest daughters favorites. She then asked to go see the fish. After seeing all the fish we waited for them to announce the raffle winners. Once we knew we did not win we headed outside for the juggling and bubble show! We were all exhausted since it had been a long day and was now 7:30pm so we only stayed for about 15 minutes of the show and decided to head out. It was a lot of fun!