The safari park is the kind of place you need to set aside a whole day for. You arrive by taxi, buy a ticket on the spot (by the way, the safari park is that rare popular tourist spot where we managed to buy a ticket without a long wait), just as easily go in and walk around until closing time.
Ticket prices (fully in line with the prices listed on the park’s website)
Rather like this: you are given tickets and go outside under the canopy to queue to load into the buses that take people around the park, because everyone is going. But you don’t have to do that!
I think transport around the park is only relevant if you have very young children or you’re quite old. In fact, it takes about five minutes to walk between the areas where this transport takes tourists. That’s no distance at all! You will get there faster on foot than waiting to be picked up.
So do this: enter the park, see a stop where there are a lot of people, turn left (in the direction where tourists leave) and walk straight along the road to the nearest animal habitat. No queues. You can check the road on online maps – there are all the roads. Or you can refer to the cartoon map on the park’s website:
Park Map
About the map:
Entrance is the entrance, you come in from here.
Al Wadi is sort of like a park in the middle. Just a park. You can take a shortcut through it, you can eat there, there is a stream, flowers grow there.
A grey path around Al Wadi runs transport, for which there is always a queue of tourists.
A road that is drawn in black on this map is the road on which another bus runs: the one on which you took a ticket if you took the tariff with Safari Journey. This is a kind of closed area of the Explorer Village territory, to which you will not be allowed without transport. And, yes, you do have to queue for the safari walk.
Also on the map at the Explorer Village there is a picture of a giraffe – this is no longer a closed area, but an enclosure with giraffes that can be fed at certain hours. Bring 10 dirhams for carrots for the giraffe!
The feeding schedule is at the giraffe enclosure. But the safari park website has a schedule for all park activities in general. Save this schedule to your phone. In addition to the giraffe feedings, the park has some animal feedings at Kid’s Farm and, for example, a bird of prey show that only happens once a day. Having this schedule on your phone will help you not miss out on an interesting interactive experience.
On the Safari Journey bus
On our visit, we didn’t have time to go around the entire park. The Arabian Desert Safari and Kid’s Farm were unfortunately overlooked. That’s a real shame. But we attended a safari excursion, for example. That was unusual. Generally the concept that it’s you in a little box and passing some lions or scowling rhinos is very unusual.
Photo from the bus during Safari Journey
But what I enjoyed most was feeding the giraffe from my hand. Turns out they are prickly to the touch like a man’s stubble.
Giraffe Feeding
We also attended a Birds of Prey performance. Also very interesting. Especially when a huge heavy bird flies over your head. Besides, the birds are shown by smiling, not tired guys. You certainly don’t have time to bore tourists if you only show them birds once a day.
Part of the Birds of Prey show
But the one that impressed me the most (or as much as the giraffe?) was the birds in the fine mesh covered dome at African Village: a wide variety of different birds running and flying in the same cage as you, wow!
There’s also a room in the park with snakes in tanks and other cold-blooded stuff, but it’s so boring I don’t think it’s even worth going in.
I recommend Dubai Safari Park. It lives up to all the youtube videos about it and lives up to expectations. The only thing is that it turned out to be territorially smaller than at first glance. (Says the man who couldn’t get round everything in a day, yes). And your impressions of the park depend only on how you perceive animal and bird life in general.
A, and, yes. There is a souvenir shop at the entrance, you can buy a panama here. A children’s one for sure, but I think you can buy an adult one too. You’ll be out in the sun all day.
