Visiting the Queens Zoo in NYC (During the Pandemic)

We have stayed pretty close to home in the last 5 months, with a few outside visits to our local park, a beach 40 minutes away, and staying at my in-laws’ house for July. I’m the one who food shops and my kids have rarely been to the supermarket with me. As restrictions are easing a bit, we were really chafing to go someplace and we decided to go the Queens Zoo, a local zoo, that’s part of the WCS, that we’ve been to tons of times.

Note, I’ve been an ambassador in the past and worked with the Bronx Zoo in November, but this visit was not part of any of that. We just missed the Zoo.

The Queens Zoo is 15 minutes from our apartment and we were thrilled that it’s open right now with social distancing and mask rules in effect. You need to buy tickets ahead of time and it’s a timed entrance.

We chose 10AM for the next day, bought and printed out our tickets (with the QR Code). I also had a screenshot of our tickets and you’ll see later why that was important.

We parked (Tip: don’t take exit 9P on the Grand Central, we got so lost. Follow Directions to Terrace on the Park and go to the public parking lot the right) and walked into the park. Go down the steps and around to the left to find the entrance to the Queens Zoo. Trust me on this one.

This is a smaller zoo, so they can do this. They will kick you out if you are not mask-compliant.

We were thrilled to be outside and had a blast wandering around the zoo on a warm summer day.

Check out our video:

Things are different, of course. You couldn’t sit it the bald eagle nest for a photo. The snack bar was closed, but you could sit outside and I’m assuming the vending machines worked. There were no open kiosks selling anything (no souvenirs), no people walking around eating. The small playground near the exit was closed (photo below). Things are definitely different in a mid-Covid-19 world and I was frankly just pleased to not be looking at my apartment walls.

We stopped at the benches by the buffalos to have a snack and then finished the zoo visit soon after.

The petting zoo is open and those animals were so happy to see us! Note: You’ll need your tickets to get in to see them, but I have given our tickets in at the main gate, so I pulled out my ticket screenshot (with the QR Code) and the zoo attendant was able to scan it.