Morning everyone.

We’re here at Zooparc du Beauval, in the Loire region of France, voted number 4 in the world’s most beautiful zoos.

It covers 44 hectares, has the largest aviary in Europe, a cablecar to take you from one side of the park to the other, and a huge climate controlled Equatorial dome. It also has a sea-lion show, and another spectacular bird show which rivals the one at Puy Du Fou (you can read about that here if you’ve never heard of France’s number 1 theme park). https://rosbifblog.com/2022/06/14/puy-du-fou-the-best-theme-park-in-the-world/

We’re in the Loire Valley, so just 2.1/4 hours easy drive from home in Creuse, but also 2.1/4 hours drive from Paris.

We’re staying at the hotel Le Jardins Du Beauval, which is a 5 minute walk from the zoo itself, and it’s pretty lovely. Spacious room with a balcony, lots of tiki style pergolas and walkways, a bar and restaurant with seating next to the water, and a swimming pool which is just the ticket after walking miles every day to see everything the Parc has to offer.

You have a choice of 5 themed hotels, 2 within walking distance and the rest within a few minutes drive, plus 3 other hotels in the close by town. With prices per night starting from 92 euros, this is so much cheaper than Disney. In fact this park is most akin to Disney’s Animal kingdom, with what it lacks slightly in Disney theming, is more than made up for in authenticity of habitat, space, breeding programmes, and diversity of species.

We arrived just after 12, and decided to go straight into the zoo to see if we could get both the shows done, and determine if we wanted to see any of them again before we left. The zoo has an app which is really good, you can see all of that days schedules for shows and talks, so we could see the sea lions were at 1.30 and the last bird show of the day was 3.30. Right, we were on a mission. It said to arrive 30 minutes before each show, and my goodness, we were there 25 minutes before and the auditorium was already 3/4 full. We were in full sun for the duration, and while it was fun, it’s definitely not a watch again. In fact my top tip would be to watch it from the shaded walkway above instead of sitting in the sun if it’s a hot day. The sea lions are incredibly clever, but I think I was expecting something more akin to the shows at Seaworld in Australia, and I think having that expectation, not the show itself, is what let me down here.

The netted in aviary is epic. 2 huge vultures were flying inside when we came in and they are my absolute favourite, Flamingos below, and rope bridges connecting areas together, with monkeys swinging freely about. We stopped in the air conditioned calm of the restaurant up there and had a snack. For info, a portion of chips is 3 euros so for essentially theme park food, it’s good value. Also had my very first ever Brookie, (which is a brownie crossed with a cookie) and it was pretty good.

Afterwards we made our way to the auditorium for the bird show, along with everyone else in the Western hemisphere it seems. It recommends you get there 30 minutes before, but I would say if you want to be as close to the birds as possible, you need to be there 45 minutes before. In typical French style, there is more than one queue, which we fell foul of the first time we went to this show. After waiting at the end of a line for 20 minutes, people behind us started to move across a walkway behind us before our queue had started to move in the opposite direction. So mental note, queue at any one of the roped off bridges, they all go at the same time and move pretty fast. This show is wonderful, I can’t stress this enough. I cried both times we saw it, because it’s just so overwhelming and beautiful and great. I will include some top tips at the end about where to sit depending on what you want to get from the experience, and some accessibility tips too.

For 30 minutes you get to see some truly astounding birds flying at close quarters, some flown from the sides of the large amphitheatre style auditorium, and others launched from a sort of pretend water tower in the middle distance. The show arena (if you can call it that), is a beautifully landscaped park with a large pond, big boulders, that some birds will demonstrate their foraging skills upon, and some areas for secretary birds to smash rubber lizards into the ground in exchange for food. I love them and I want to be the secretary bird handler please. This show must have been developed by the same people as the Puy Du Fou show. A little less Medieval whimsy than Puy Du Fou, but the spectacular finale with the addition of so many brightly coloured birds is breathtaking. I can’t choose which one I liked more. You have to see this.

There are (I’ve just counted from the park map), 20 places to get food within the park itself, 4 proper sit down restaurants, and a variety of fast food outlets, a couple of bars, and places to buy an ice cream or snack. The app will tell you where your closest one is, and show the menus so you can plan in advance. We found, (and this is normal for France in our experience), that fast food is very rarely that, and some of the organisation around queuing and paying was not exactly thought through. A separate queue for people just wanting drinks or an ice cream for example would have halved the queue in seconds. The cashier was constantly waiting to take payment with nobody there, while the bottle neck was the ordering point right next door. Or, of course, allow for ordering and payment at both windows, just saying. Being France, you couldn’t just take the beef kebab as it comes, they were cooking everything to order to the customer’s specification, heaven forbid you might get a piece of overcooked beef. I’d argue this is theme park food in the middle of school holidays, just get it done, and if you’re worried so much about overcooked beef, perhaps order the chicken?! This is a minor niggle to be honest though, everything we ate was good quality, reasonably priced and in that regard better than Puy Du Fou. A slight caveat to that though, I was vegetarian when we visited Puy du Fou, France has since broken me and I am now not, so dining choices were made slightly easier on this trip.

The zoo itself is truly wonderful. Multiple breeding programmes, including condors which they have had great success with releasing back into the wild which I absolutely love. It is huge though, and I would recommend a 3 night stay, spending 3/4 of each day in the park itself to get the best of everything, without entirely breaking yourself. We did a total of 42,000 steps in our 3 days and managed to see everything we wanted to, with time for a retreat back to the hotel swimming pool mid afternoon.

I can’t remotely list all the animals you can see here, there are just too many, but I can share with you our highlights. The gorillas, orangoutangs and large monkeys were wonderful. If you are at the park for opening (see tips), you can see them being fed and let out into their enclosures first thing. What a privilege it is to see them. The indoor tropical bird aviary, with the massive hornbills, and so many varieties of bird just strutting about and flying around you is a joy. The equatorial dome which is a huge climate controlled tropical paradise is stunning. Bats roosting above your head, giant tortoises, manatees and our favourites the giant otters. Stunning enclosures for the Golden Monkeys and Giant Pandas. A Serengeti type area where giraffes hang out with antelopes and rhinos and emus, you can eat overlooking this area which is really rather nice. We learned that capybaras and tapirs are actually massive. More akin to the size of a cow than say a goat. I lost count of the number of times I said wow. I fell in love with some species I have never heard of or seen before in my life. One we christened the Wizard Pig, but was actually a Potamochoerus, a type of African red bush pig with long wispy white tips to his ears and tail. He looked like a Jim Henson creation. The Australian Tree Kangaroo, just gorgeous, and move over meerkats, because I am now obsessed with the Mongoose. Otters in any form are always great to watch, and for me, vultures are everything, and to see so many and so close, I love it.

The park is really well laid out, well signposted, great wide level paths, many of them covered in case of inclement weather, or to offer much needed shade on hot days. Great for people with additional mobility needs, wide, flat, accessible paths, and lifts available in the few areas where there is a significant slope. There is the cablecar that will take you from one side of the Park to another, but not loving heights, we preferred to walk.

The car park is huge, and there is a large quantity of electric charging points. There also appears to be dedicated parking for motor homes, and it may even be possible to stay overnight, but there are certainly campsites nearby.

The total cost for our 3 night stay was 853 Euros (August 2025), so taking into consideration that this is in school holidays, and included a buffet breakfast and 4 days park admission for 2 people, this blows Disney out of the water. Park admission is usually 41 euros each, but they are running a discount at the moment so you can get a park ticket for 32 euros. Plus there is another discount for bookings now, for 25% off hotels too. I imagine travelling outside of school holidays would also be a little cheaper. Dinner in our hotel, or the other hotel close by was 29 euros pp and was another buffet style, all you can eat affair. The food was great quality but we did find that the selection of items was a little odd, things that didn’t quite go together. The sorbets were incredible though, top marks to the chef responsible, I had mango one and a mandarin one, and I am an absolute convert. Well, I have just turned 50, perhaps that’s the age to start appreciating a good sorbet….

We thoroughly enjoyed our stay, and would definitely recommend staying on site, you absolutely cannot cover the whole park in a day, just don’t even try.

Here are my top tips for a great trip.

• Buy tickets in advance on-line to avoid queuing at the ticket office on site.
• Arrive 30 minutes prior to park opening time, in our experience there will be a sizeable queue if you arrive bang on time, and they did start to admit people 15 minutes before the advertised time.
• Electric car charging is plentiful, consider registering for a service such as Chargemap in advance. You link your payment to this card and your charging will activate with one swipe. It’s also a great way to plan your trip for peace of mind.
• Try to be at your chosen lunch spot before 12.00 noon to avoid a long wait.
• Animals were much more active at opening time, we could see the gorillas being fed, and animals being let out into their enclosures. On a hot day in the afternoon, many animals like the big cats may be asleep.
• If you want to be super close to the birds during the bird show, aim to sit directly next to the decked platform to the right of the auditorium. You will have a slightly obscured view from the rail if you sit in the front row, but the action is in the sky anyway so this really doesn’t matter. What you will have are huge eagles and vultures ruffling your hair. If this might freak you out or are with young children, perhaps stay central and avoid any of the rails that are covered with green artificial grass, these are perches used mainly by the owls.
• Be at the bird show 45 minutes before showtime to help guarantee the spot you want.
• There is wheelchair seating at the very top, and if you have a special requirement the staff are super helpful.
• Watch the sea lion show from the covered walkway above rather than from in the auditorium on a hot day.
• The nearby town of Saint-Aignan has quite a few restaurant options for the evening if you don’t want to eat at the hotel. We can recommend Restaurant Hestia.
• If you are staying at the hotels, book the 7-8am breakfast slot. We found that nice and quiet, but the 8-9am slot they were queuing out of the door to get in as we were leaving.
• Similarly with dinner, 7-8pm was great, but we couldn’t get another slot in the neighbouring hotel until 9pm the next night. There didn’t seem to be quite enough staff, and they kept running out of things, bread, plates, rice, the wait to order and receive drinks was also quite lengthy. You can book dinner in the restaurants when you book your hotel stay, this would give you much better choice than booking on the day at reception like we did.

We thoroughly enjoyed this park and we’ll definitely visit again. In fact the Loire area in general is a place that we’ll be coming back to I feel. We also visited Chateau Chenonceau, just 30 minutes drive away, and there will be blog coming on that soon. It’s absolutely stunning.

For an idea of the bird show, you can watch my YouTube video on Puy Du Fou below.

Puy du Fou Youtube

I’ll also do a reel for instagram showing some of the highlights which will coincide with this blog.

Thanks for reading, and please let me know if there are any more hidden gems here in France you think we should visit.

TTFN,

V x

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