Last week, London Zoo held a party to celebrate the opening of the new Gorilla Kingdom. About 800 guests, mainly from the travel and tourism industry in and around London, attended and I was lucky enough to get hold of a ticket!

The evening kicked off at 6.30 when guests arrived at London Zoo to be greeted by exotic drumming and singing as well as a group of dancing gorillas (actually a bunch of guys in gorilla costumes but I was a bit scared at first!) We were all given cocktails in coconuts and led through to the new Gorilla Kingdom. The new enclosure for the three Lowland Gorillas was spectacular and all aspects of the attraction had clearly been given a lot of thought. Even the entrance to the enclosure was pretty amazing. Visitors could choose between taking the ‘adventure trail’ to Gorilla Kingdom or walking through the large aviary. (I couldn’t take the adventure trail because I was wearing suede, stiletto heeled black boots, turns out they’re not the most appropriate footwear for walking around a zoo!)
While everyone admired the new enclosure, the gorillas got very up close and personal with us. The glass that separates the visitors from the gorillas at one part of the enclosure was an ideal viewing point. At one point, the largest gorilla, Bobbi, gave the guests quite a shock when he banged the glass then ran off, it seemed to be his party trick and I think he enjoyed watching us all jump back in shock! (Apparently he did the same thing when the Mayor of London visited the Kingdom). Gorilla Kingdom really is an impressive new attraction and had loads of info for kids and adults to learn more about Western Lowland Gorillas and the threats to their survival in the wild. The enclosure took 3 years to design and 18 months to build, costing London Zoo, 5.3 million pounds! (I can’t quite figure out how it took twice as long to design it as to build it but then again, I wouldn’t have a clue how to design a gorilla enclosure!)
After we’d all spent plenty of time looking around the gorilla’s new kingdom we made our way to the picnic area of the zoo where the band were still drumming away. The picnic area was lined with tables full of food and drink - excellent! While we waited for the commercial director of the Zoo to make his speech, we spent a good part of the evening chatting, eating and drinking - it’s a tough job but somebody has to do it! After an interesting speech from the commercial director of ZSL (Zoological Society of London) the guests all split up for a tour of the Zoo. I headed to the Reptile House and, surprisingly for a scaredy-cat, I loved it. There were loads of really interesting and, yes, I would go so far to say, beautiful creatures in there. We saw a Komodo Dragon being fed which was fascinating, although I did feel a bit squeamish! One of the snakes in the reptile house is even a film star - the Burmese Python from the Harry Potter film where Harry realises he can speak parceltongue. Weird, I remember that Harry spoke parceltongue but I can’t remember the name of the film - can anyone help me out?
All in all I had a fantastic evening at London Zoo, they can certainly throw a party and design a pretty fantastic Gorilla Kingdom too!

Related Posts:
No related posts

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 11:14 am and is filed under Theatre. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.