Van Blanckendaell Park, North Holland Province, The Netherlands

4fitzjing 5:00 PM Nov 3, 2016

Must do! for the young and old
This parc is actually a zoo. They have limited number of animals and the surroundings are basic but the animals are well fed and look great. Staff is dedicated, friendly and profession and they seem to enjoy their work. It's a parc for the young and the old and everything is neatly kept and maintained. The cafe is a marvelous old building in with small ornaments and architectural details in perfect condition. The windmill is also kept in perfect conditions. A visit to this parc on a clear sunny day results in picture perfect snapshots of you and your family.

3Ka M 5:00 PM Aug 27, 2019

Confused...
In the guide I got from the place we stayed this zoo was given the description Little Artis. As Artis is the Netherlands’ most famous zoo I expected to find lots of different animals in a nice park. What I got was mainly cages filled with birds, apes, and deer. Most cages are double fenced which makes it difficult to get a clear view of the animals, and especially the deer cages looked bare (I know growing vegetarisme when deer are around is close to impossible, but still.) The savanna part of the park is an exception to this. Animals have all the space and there are lots of plants and green grass. I really liked this part of the zoo. Petting zoo was very small (1 large goat and three or so donkeys) and not suitable for the very little ones. It looked old and badly kept, broken animal toys lying around. Animals did not want to be petted (but this can be just the moment of the day of course). Playground was okay, except for the bouncing thing which was covered in water and dirt. I didn’t get the playground behind the restaurant/cafetaria. It was really nice but hidden and it was painted as to support one of the Dutch soccer teams, but for what reason? According to me the cafetaria needs an urgent upgrade. The interior is so old fashion that it begane cute again, but the food... we had grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, which were on white bread (dislike) and I was told that I could get one without cheese as ‘we can get the cheese of for you’. From my experience working in foods this means that you are serving Frozen pre-prepped grilled cheese sandwiches and I have never understood why one would choose this over making their OWN sandwiches and grill these. Coffee was horrible, you pay over 2 euros and it comes out of a machine. The rest of the menu is fried food and overpriced. What I really hated was that every cage (keep in mind that this is not an exageration) was hung with a sign displaying all that was forbidden in the park (like petting the animals or sticking your fingers in a cage containing wild animals). For starters, I hope that all adult mankind knies this and it should be enough to just put up the sign at the entrance, as I think one should be able to remember those rules for a couple of hours (otherwise, you may deserve being bitten by a capibara or so *wink*). The enormous amount of signs was quite annoying actually. Including lunch, we spent 3 hours here. I think it is an okay trip if you take your own lunch and don’t expect too much (which I clearly did, as it is far away from living up to Artis).