Autism Review: Yorkshire Wildlife Park Revisited

A year ago, I started to write this series of ‘Autism Review’ blogs looking at the accessibility of different places for autistic people. The first of those blogs was a review of Yorkshire Wildlife Park.

I recently visited Yorkshire Wildlife Park again and noticed some changes in terms of accessibility, so I wanted to write an updated review of their accessibility.

During your visit:

I was very disappointed to see that there is still a lack of clear signage in car park which meant that the visit started in the same stressful way as it did previously.

One of the biggest changes since my last visit was the addition of ‘Pangea, Discovery of Dinosaurs’, a series of a large, moving and roaring Dinosaurs. Unfortunately, this has made the visit far less accessible as the sound of the roaring can be heard in various places around the park so what was a peaceful visit last year without constant background noise has now become an increasingly overwhelming experience. I couldn’t quite understand why the dinosaurs had been included at Yorkshire Wildlife Park.

Another change was the reduction in the number of food and drink places that were open on the day I visited which meant that a lot more of the day was spent trying to find somewhere to get a drink than in my previous visit. It would be good to make it clearer which food outlets will be open on the day or make sure that the open places are better spaced out throughout the park.

This time I was able to attend one of the Ranger Talks with the Red Pandas. This was the highlight of my visit, the Ranger delivering the talk was friendly and approachable and the talk was really interesting. They said that they had only just started in that role but they were a real credit to Yorkshire Wildlife Park. I came to this talk as I had seen it advertised on the website before my visit so I would recommend checking that before you visit as there was no signage for the talk once you arrived.

Overall, there are definitely some areas where accessibility does need to be improved for autistic visitors at Yorkshire Wildlife Park.