Thank You for the Memories

In celebration of Love Your Zoo week (25th May to 2nd June), we invited our visitors to share their favourite memories of Colchester Zoo. We were amazed to see so many comments and our management team were very moved by the stories.

Managing Director, Dr Dominique Tropeano OBE said, “I find these stories amazing and am extremely grateful to all the people who took the trouble to write and share their memories with us, thank you!”

As a result of the overwhelming response, we have decided to share some of these memories below!


“My favourite memory is of when my mum was alive she used to love being the last person to visit the chimpanzees. She adored these beautiful animals and could watch them for hours. My mum sadly passed away before she met my 3 beautiful children and gorgeous nephew and it brings me so much joy that they too love visiting the chimps and crocodile and could sit for hours in the exact spot my mum would have.”

“My favourite memory is proposing to my wife outside the old indoor sloth area.”

“The zoo is mine and my fiancé’s happy place. We were gifted gold passes for Christmas in 2022 and plan on renewing every year. We always come at least once a month. We love getting there at opening time and we have developed our photography skills, creating a scrapbook of all the animals and their names. A favourite memory was the early morning opening for pass holders and seeing all the animals come out at the Kingdom Of The Wild Paddock, including gorgeous Dara. I can’t include just one memory – so being gifted the red panda adoption for my 21st birthday is up there too.”

“My favourite memory is the first time I saw a kangaroo! I’ve been visiting the zoo since the 1960s, as a child then with my daughters and now with my grandchildren. I’ve seen many changes over the years but still love to visit.”


You can read all of the memories shared here.