I’m planning a trip with some friends to Chicago in July/August, and want to hit up either Brookfield Zoo or Lincoln Park Zoo. I used to live in the area, and visited Brookfield Zoo several times, and I liked it a lot. I never visited Lincoln Park Zoo.
We’ll be staying in the city, and I believe it is a long bus trip out to Brookfield Zoo from the city proper, while Lincoln Park Zoo is closer. I don’t know if Lincoln Park Zoo is really high quality, though; my friends and I tend to get depressed seeing animals in too-small cages with no intellectual stimuli. We’d also be more interested in a medium to large zoo, and I’m not sure how big Lincoln Park Zoo is.
Does anyone know how well Lincoln Park Zoo is doing in these regards?
I haven’t been there in years, but they have expanded a bit with more outdoor exhibits. Obviously, as a smaller zoo, there simply isn’t enough room to do it as well as Brookfield. For its size, it’s above average, IMHO. And LPZ is free.
The better zoo is Brookfield by far. With LPZ, adults would have to be pretty leisurely to spend a full day there. You might want want an option for something else for afterwards, maybe visiting the local bars or clubs on Clark or over on Lincoln. But I don’t have any specific recommendations.
Having grown up as a city kid, I’m a big fan of LPZ. The one big advantage over Brookfield is that it is compact. You can see all of it without hiking for miles. And you can’t beat the price, as opposed to Brookfield where it sometimes seems like every other house/attraction is a couple of extra bucks.
I haven’t been to LPZ in a couple of years, but they used to have an excellent great ape house. They’ve made quite an effort to reduce the “small cages” aspect. For example, just recently they stopped showing elephants (after a couple of deaths 
). The monkey house used to be tile and bars - now it contains far fewer and more natural group exhibits. Over the past decade or two they have redone just about every major house in the place. The zoo also has the Rookery, the conservatory, the farm, Cafe Brauer (really neat old building) for lunch/snack, and paddle boats (if you are into such things).
It is certainly way more than a small petting zoo or an outdated exercise in animal cruelty. And I think it gets props for being a decent sized zoo smack dab in a big city, with neat skyline views all around.
Also, although LPZ itself won’t take all day, there are several other things in the area to make it a worthwhile trip. Right in the area (easy walking distance) are the Peggy Notebart (sp?) nature museum, the recently redone (and renamed) Chicago Historical Society, the lakefront where you could walk, rent bikes, swim, etc, and a pretty neat neighborhood with lots of restaurants and such.
Best way to get to Brookfield, if you don’t have a car, is the train out of Union Station.
If you want a “world class” zoo, then you should go to Brookfield. But if you have been to Brookfield before and have never been to LPZ, I’d give it a shot.
Hm, awesome. The zoo over here in Salt Lake City, Hogle Zoo, is in the process of revamping its cages, although it’s taking quite a while. LPZ sounds quite promising then. Easy enough to find something else to do too, as you say, which is useful.
Ooh, and I found their website, and they have African wild dogs and sand cats which I ADORE. Unless my friends come up with a pretty good reason to head all the way out to Brookfield we’ll probably head out to LPZ as it seems to be doing very well, and I don’t think any of us would want to march around a huuuuuge zoo all day.
Thank you guys very much for letting me know it’s quite nice now. I’ve been to some REALLY cruddy zoos with the ‘pacing tiger’ effect going on, so I was a bit nervous. But sand cats!!