Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens

Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens is the Northside zoo at 370 Zoo Parkway, also labeled Jacksonville Zoo and Botanical Gardens on Google and Visit Jacksonville. An earlier Places dump scored the match only a 5 and left the Google object empty. The alternate pin is the real zoo: 4.6 from 21,492 Google reviews at 370 Zoo Parkway, operational. Stay Safe Jax accepts that card. It is not a random wildlife park and not the closed MOSH building. The public Yelp listing at jacksonville-zoo-and-gardens-jacksonville shows 4.2 from 482 reviews at the same Zoo Parkway address. Stay Safe Jax averages those stored snapshots, so the headline is 4.4 from 21,974 combined reviews. Those numbers are not live. A 4.6 Google / 4.2 Yelp split is ordinary for a large, busy attraction: families praise animals and gardens, and they also complain about heat, walking distance, food prices, and peak-day crowds. Visit Jacksonville and recent Times-Union coverage list daily hours 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with last tickets often sold around 4:00 p.m. and the zoo closed Thanksgiving and Christmas. Phone in visitor-bureau copy is (904) 757-4463. Visit Jacksonville describes a walking safari of about 93 acres, more than 2,000 animals, and 1,000 plant species, and still calls it a top paid attraction in Northeast Florida. Ticket prices on the visitor-bureau kids guide (adults about $31) change; confirm before you go. The current capital story is the manatee entrance. The Florida Times-Union and News4JAX reported that the J. Wayne and Delores Barr Weaver Manatee River Habitat and VyStar SkyScape entrance opened March 6, 2026, after a $72 million project that started in 2023. The habitat is a federally permitted critical-care site with hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and room for rescued manatees. March coverage named Alpine, Francesco, and Cullen as early residents. That is conservation news, not a scandal. Open flags stay at 0. Families planning a Northside education day should use this listing for the correct Zoo Parkway campus, a large Google sample, a verified Yelp snapshot, and 9-to-5 hours. Bring water and a stroller plan; the grounds are a long walk in Florida heat, which is what many of those thousands of reviews actually discuss. It is not Tree Hill Nature Center in Arlington.