Meet Animals Up Close at Cincinnati Zoo

Imagine your kids’ thrills at meeting a live kangaroo up close! Your family doesn’t need to travel to Australia — these kangaroos live in Ohio. Seeing wild animals from other parts of the world is always exciting for kids, but Cincinnati Zoo takes the experience to a new level.

Instead of just watching animals from a distance in recreated natural habitats, families can add an up-close wildlife encounter to their zoo experience. Kickin’ it with the Kangaroos takes visitors into Roo Valley to meet and interact with these curious marsupials, while learning about them and their habits from the keepers. Inside Kangaroo Barn, kids learn all about kangaroo habits and history, as well as how the zoo works to protect wild tree kangaroos in their native environment.

Families visiting Cincinnati from April through October can book the Elephant Bath experience, entering the historic elephant house to learn all about how keepers care for elephants. Kids actually join staff to give a bath to the earth’s largest land mammal. That’s an experience to talk about back home.

Also available from April through October, the VIPenguin program goes inside the Birds of the World bird house with keepers for a meet-and-greet, featuring a Magellanic, Rock Hopper or King penguin. After meeting the penguin, you can watch as a talented penguin artist creates one-of-a-kind artwork for kids to take home. The other kids at school won’t have a show-and-tell to match this one.