Everything you need to now about visiting ZooTown, London Zoo's amazing new immersive play space. Our review.

On Thursday, we were invited to a sneak preview of ZSL London Zoo's amazing new immersive children's play area, ZooTown. You can see an Instagram reel we posted about our visit here. Opening to the public on October 18th 2025, here's everything you need to know about visiting London's newest family attraction.

What is ZooTown?

London Zoo's historic reptile house (famous for that snake scene in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone) has been transformed into ZooTown, an incredible new immersive play area for 3-8 year olds celebrating curiosity, learning through play and of course, a love of wildlife and conservation. Following a U-shaped route around the building, youngsters can step into the action-packed world of zookeeping and conservation, exploring 12 different beautifully detailed themed play zones full of costumes, props and fun hands on activities.

The different ZooTown rooms allow children to try their hand at every aspect of the zoo world, from preparing food for the animals to serving coffee and cakes in the cafe, microchipping animals in the veterinary hospital and cleaning out the zebras (by far the most popular space... kids just seem to love poo!).

We were incredibly lucky in that there were only about 20 children at our press preview, which meant Jamie had lots of space to explore ZooTown and try out all of the toys and props in his 45 minute slot. Public sessions are capped at 75 participants, which doesn't sound like many if they're spread out over the 12 zones, but we would imagine that the most popular spaces like the vet hospital and zebra clean up could be pretty busy on a fully booked slot.

The 12 ZooTown play zones are:

• Veterinary Hospital - our favourite zone. Beautifully detailed and realistic, you can scan the microchips of a variety of cuddly zoo residents, check their teeth, perform an ultrasound on a pregnant African Painted Dog and examine x-rays and poo from different zoo animals.

• Science Lab - put on a white lab coat, check blood, skin and poo samples under microscopes and play whack-a-germ.

• Zebra clean up - being a zookeeper isn't just about feeding cute animals, you have to muck them out as well! Full of happy, squealing toddlers, the main focus of this room is the 300 brown ball pit balls shooting out of two zebra bottoms on the wall, ready to be swept up into wheel barrows. Once the enclosure is clean, budding zookeepers can lay out hay bales for the zebras to eat.

• Zoo Cafe and ice-cream stand - wholesome and fun, the cafe is set with pastel coloured tables and chairs, a selection of yummy looking wooden cakes, a countertop to take orders at and a wonderfully detailed interactive coffee machine. You can also try your hand on the ice cream stand, serving up scoops of fun flavours like Slothy Coffee and Vanilla Gorilla.

• Keeper Kitchen - it's not just the humans that need feeding! At the Keeper Kitchen, you can choose from a wide range of wooden fruit, veg, fish and meat to prepare for the animals.

• Zoo Garden - design your own wildlife garden and help to water and harvest the wooden vegetables that are grown for the zoo animals.

• Construction - a building themed soft play where you can pop on a yellow hard hat to design and create new habitats for the zoo.

• Field Camp - head into the wild and explore the conservationist's field camp. Little ones can watch each other via night vision cameras as they make their way through a dark tunnel, explore the campsite with its mini wooden stove, campfire and tent, pack a backpack for their adventure and learn about tracking cheetahs and turtles.

• Post office - help deliver the parcels and letters around the zoo!

• Library - if your family needs a moment of quiet, take a seat the Joan Proctor's Children's Library. This red phone box is pack full of gorgeous books aimed at littles, all about animals, science and zoos.

• Zoo Jeep - with real lights, horn and engine sounds, Jamie loved trying behind the wheel of ZooTown's life sized, tiger print jeep!

• Zoo presenter stage - Lights, camera, action! Can your child pretend to be David Attenborough or one of London Zoo's fabulous keeper presenters and give a talk about their favourite animals? With spotlights, microphones and fabulous costumes,this play zone is perfect for budding conservation stars. We particularly enjoyed the zoo themed musical posters for Camelton and Llama-Mia...

How to get tickets for ZooTown and how much does it cost?

A 45 minute ZooTown session is an add on in addition to your London Zoo ticket and costs an amazing £1 per visitor. ZSL Gold members, Fellows and Patrons can visit for free.

All tickets are available online and need to be booked at the same time as your London Zoo entry ticket - dates become available 3 days in advance. NB. Children will need to be accompanied by adults aged 18 years or over and you have to buy a regular zoo ticket in order to access ZooTown s it is inside the London Zoo site.

ZooTown is officially aimed at 3 - 8 year olds, so Jamie, aged 22 months, was definitely one of the youngest participants. While he didn't understand the roleplay aspect of the play zones, he still got so much out of his visit and loved exploring the different environments, cuddling the animal toys in the Hospital, the Construction soft play zone, the toy food in the Keeper Kitchen and trying on the costumes. If you're planning a visit with a 3-8 year old and their younger sibling, rest assured that toddlers will definitely enjoy ZooTown.

If you're looking for more fun things to do with little ones in London, check out our recent blog: what to do in London with a toddler - 22 fun ideas your little one will love

For more information and to book ZooTown tickets, head to the ZSL London Zoo website

We were invited to visit ZooTown by the London Zoo press department, but we were not paid to post and as always, all opinions are our own.

Pin this blog for later!