AT A GLANCE
Why go?
The San Diego Zoo Safari Park is the sprawling, open-range sister park to the San Diego Zoo, set on 1,800 semi-arid acres in the San Pasqual Valley near Escondido. Rather than tightly drawn exhibits, herds of African and Asian animals roam across sweeping savanna-like habitats, with over 300 species living in spaces that feel closer to the wild than anything a city zoo can offer.↗
This is the place to come for the big safari feeling: guided expeditions in open-air trucks across the grasslands, a walk-through trek among free-roaming animals, and the chance to rise above it all on the tethered Balloon Safari. Add the all-new Denny Sanford Elephant Valley, where you can come face-to-face with the largest land animals on Earth, and a visit becomes a full day out under wide Southern California skies.↗↗
What makes it special
Where the San Diego Zoo packs wonder into canyons of Balboa Park, the Safari Park spreads it out across a valley. The 1,800-acre site was built so animals that need room to roam actually have it, and the result is a landscape that reads like an African savanna transplanted into inland San Diego County. Antelope, giraffes and other herd animals graze in broad, naturalized enclosures where the horizon, not a fence line, is what you notice first.
