The Best Sleepover Experiences At Zoos Across America, According To Parents

As a proud lifelong resident of Route 66 city Tulsa, Oklahoma, I've always loved spending time at the Tulsa Zoo, our city's dreamily landscaped, conservation-focused zoo. And as a parent, I've enjoyed taking my kids there year after year and watching them develop a personal sense of connection to all sorts of living things as they've grown. When we were offered the opportunity to crash at the zoo for my TulsaKids Magazine blog Coffee Nebula, I had never heard of a zoo sleepover. But the idea of snoozing among some of my city's coolest — and most genetically diverse — residents sounded like a dream.

When we showed up at the zoo with our sleeping bags and inflatable air mattresses in tow, we had no idea what we were in for: A night of family fun that included closeup animal encounters with a crew of Chinese zodiac-themed critters like a brilliant yellow bearded dragon and Hamilton, the gregarious Guinea hog. But the best part was after the zoo had gone dark for the night when the zoo came alive with its nocturnal friends. The feeling of strolling under the Green Country moonlight, aided only by a red flashlight so as not to upset the locals, was nothing short of magical. There's electricity in the night air as it comes alive with sounds and activity you'll never get to experience by daylight — which is why it's so great that more zoos are starting to add sleepovers to their programming these days.

While a few zoos host a cocktail hour some evenings, most zoo sleepovers are designed as kids events. But animal-loving grownups get to get in on the fun at Cincinnati Zoo's overnight event that has all the fun of a scout campout minus the rowdy middle schoolers. And instead of just Capri-Suns and graham crackers, they've got cocktails and charcuterie on the menu. 

Campers start showing up around 6 p.m. to check into one of the zoo's safari-style Twiga tents located within viewing distance of the giraffes living at Giraffe Ridge. Each tent features several bunk beds and plenty of outlets to keep everyone's phones juiced. Although no dinner is provided, the adults-only overnighter includes a social hour where campers enjoy drinks and hors d'ouvres and hang out with an Animal Ambassador friend. Since each keeper brings their favorite animal, there's no telling which furry, feathery, or leathery friend campers will get to hang with. 

After a few games like the zoo's signature game "Who Killed My Goat?," campers will break into small groups for an after-hours zoo tour with a Zoo Educator that includes a behind-the-scenes peek at the Hippo Barn. Guests get to chill with more Animal Ambassadors before wrapping up the evening with campfire s'mores. Breakfast brings yet another animal friend as campers check out the giraffe-feeding from the Twiga tents and then enjoy the zoo at their own leisure before heading home from the campout.

Imagine waking to the sound of lions roaring to see giraffes, elephants, and rhinos within view of your Roar & Snore Campground tent at a safari experience from one of America's top five zoos. "Was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience," one Google reviewer wrote, adding, "Walking the zoo at night in the dark will be a memory for a lifetime." San Diego Zoo campers even get a chance to visit the lions before the zoo opens when they're still active.

And if you're not really into roughing it, no worries. While the zoo's standard tents come with a foam floor and vista tents come with cots, a space heater, and fans, there's also a dreamier glamping option available. The zoo's larger premium tents offer the luxury of a fully made queen bed, two cots, electrical outlets, wood floors, area rug, and storage.

A buffet-style dinner, breakfast, and s'mores around the campfire are included. Guests check in around four for an early dinner and time to relax around their tents before the adventure begins. Once the sun goes down, the real fun begins with a walk around the pitch-black zoo, where guests are immersed in the sounds of nocturnal animals just living their best zoo lives. Campers can even upgrade their experience to catch a look at the locals through night vision goggles. Between events, campers can relax and play lawn games like giant Jenga. And like Cincinnati Zoo, San Diego also offers an adults-only experience.

Founded in 1874, Philadelphia Zoo is the country's oldest zoo and in a city known for its lush botanical beauty, it makes sense that its zoo would be too. While Philadelphia doesn't hold ongoing camping experiences that are open to small groups or individuals, the zoo regularly hosts public events that are open to family groups and scout troops. And if you've got a large crew and some cash to blow on the ultimate sleepover or birthday party, they also offer private bookings for large groups of 35 to 45 guests for families who want to give their kids a memory to last a lifetime. 

The overnights are part of Philadelphia's KidZooU, an educational kids zoo zone that's best suited for kiddos between the ages of six and 13. Guests get to camp in the Tree House, a whimsical zone full of fiberglass dinos, frogs, honeycombs, and other fun for kids to climb all over. Like all good zoo overnights, Philadelphia's sleepovers feature a night hike through the dark zoo, up-close-and-personal animal experiences, the chance to talk with a zookeeper, and plenty of other educational fun like riddles and challenges. Attendees also get to keep a souvenir patch and reusable water bottle.

Of course, your crew will need plenty of fuel for all that zoo hiking and climbing. While not all of the Philadelphia zoo experiences come with dinner, they do come with an evening snack and the zoo caters a generous continental breakfast buffet served with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, danishes, and other goodies.

Like its neighboring Central Park Zoo, New York's Queens Zoo, a relatively small zoo known for its large collection of exotic birds, is considered an under-the-radar hidden gem by many locals. As one Google review put it, "Great little zoo. Very walkable and won't exhaust you." Another review raved, "THE BEST ZOO IVE EVER BEEN TOO [...] Literally gorgeous and awesome to enter and see the birds flying around you. It's as if you're inside the bird cage of jurassic park." And the best part? They offer some pretty sweet sleepovers. 

Despite the zoo's size, they place a good deal of emphasis on providing family-focused overnight events. And it's precisely because of that small size that campers can enjoy a zoo sleepover without feeling overwhelmed by the crowd size as they stroll through the grounds after dark. The following morning, campers will enjoy a morning scavenger hunt and even more close-up animal encounters. 

On the camping side of things, this zoo overnight is a pretty bare-bones experience, but that could only serve to amplify the fun for some folks. Guess for this zoo snooze bring their own camping gear and get to tent camp in a primitive campsite outdoors on the zoo grounds. Breakfast and snacks are included with the ticket price, and campers are welcome to either pick up food at the zoo cafe or bring their own picnic dinner when they come.  The family-friendly event is open to campers ages four and up. 

Located in the Dallas Fort Worth area, Fort Worth Zoo offers a Safari Overnight for groups of 15 or more ages six and up through their education department. For folks who want the zoo experience but don't have a birthday party crew or scout troop to tag along with, the zoo also periodically hosts family sleepovers for parents and kids ages four through 12. The events run from 8 p.m. to 10 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays throughout the year and include an evening snack and continental breakfast with the cost of the campout. 

Glampers beware: this is a fairly minimalist experience where campers sleep on the floor of the education building classrooms — likely a necessity since the Texas heat and humidity can make outdoor camping a challenge during the long summer months. To make things more comfortable, guests are encouraged to bring along a foam pad or twin-sized air mattress to sleep on. You'll also want to bring your best walking shoes since once campers are settled in, they are treated to a fairly thorough nighttime stroll around the zoo to check out all of the nocturnal critters. A morning hike the following day ensures campers get another opportunity to maximize their animal sightings. 

Atlanta's Nightcrawler experience is a bring-your-own-sleeping bag group sleepover with indoor sleeping accommodations — a must in the humid heat of a Georgia summer. To help make the most of their night zoo walks, guests are given red lights that won't disturb the animals while campers get a closer look at the nocturnal friends in the Scaly Slimy Spectacular — think lizards, frogs, and snakes, oh my! Zoo ambassadors even liven things up with a reptile scavenger hunt to help keep sleepy kiddos engaged. For the daring, there may even be opportunities to touch the animals.

"The staff is very friendly and well informed," one Tripadvisor reviewer recalled, adding, "They love to share their stories so don't hesitate to chat them up and you will learn a lot." Night vision scopes are also available for guests as they walk around the zoo.

And then there's the magic of the morning zoo to look forward to. "The morning portion was amazing!" another Tripadvisor user wrote. "We got to enjoy our morning breakfast listening to birds chirping and lions roaring." After a breakfast catered from Proof of the Pudding, campers get a chance to walk around the zoo and check out some of the exhibits they missed.

The only thing better than a zoo sleepover is a zoo sleepover with a pizza party. And that's exactly what you get when you sign up for the Memphis Zoo Snooze. While Memphis Zoo doesn't have any ongoing public sleepovers, the Zoo Snooze is available for private groups of between 15 and 50 to book. Even better, each party gets a chance to customize their own experience by choosing their activities, tours, and encounters with animal visitors like owls and snakes.

After a crowd-pleasing pizza dinner, evening activity, and night hike, campers get to bunk down in the zoo classrooms on their own sleeping bags. After a light breakfast the next morning, they're free to explore the zoo some more on their own.

The event is available for birthday parties or just for the fun of it, but it's also a longtime favorite outing among local scouting troops. As one parent who attended a Zoo Snooze with her daughter's Girl Scout troop wrote on Facebook, "We learned so much! It was a great way to get to see some of the behind the scenes action at the zoo and will be an experience my daughter and I will look back and smile on."

With its long history dating back to 1868 and its free regular zoo entrance admission, Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo is one of the best-rated zoos in the Midwest — so of course they host zoo sleepovers! Since the z-catching part of this zoo sleepover experience takes place in the great outdoors and this is the Windy City, the events are held seasonally on weekends during the warmer summer months, and it's a bring-your-own tent situation. Campers start off their evenings by pitching a tent and hanging out around their campsites before getting into the planned activities while roaming the zoo. Elisabeth Rich reported a scavenger hunt the opportunity to create paper maché enrichment toys for zoo animals.

After the evening officially wraps up with s'mores around the campfire, campers can either check out the zoo some more or relax around their campsites before calling it a night. Morning brings a new adventure as the likes of flamingoes and gibbons stand in for campers' regular alarm clocks around dawn to alert them it's time for breakfast and a morning zoo hike. And if you love the idea of a zoo campout conceptually but would prefer to sleep in your own bed rather than roughing it on a camp air mattress, no worries. Hanging out for the evening only is also allowed.

There are many reasons to visit Omaha Zoo, known more formally as Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium. For example, there's the fact that this midwest gem is home to the world's largest indoor desert housed under the world's largest geodesic dome (aptly named Desert Dome). That, and Omaha's Sleeping Bag Safaris are a top-notch zoo sleepover experience.

The zoo offers a few different ways to experience their Sleeping Bag Safaris. Party people ages four and up with a group of 25 or more can book their own Private Safari event year-round — and it's a pretty action-packed experience. These safaris include hands-on educational programming, conservation games, a safari-themed wind-down movie, nocturnal guided tours, and a morning zoo tour. The zoo also regularly hosts events like the Family Exploration Safaris, which include behind-the-scenes zoo tours, conservation education, hands-on activities, and family bonding experiences. They also offer themed family safaris like Sleeping in a Sea Cave (Owens Sea Lions), Overnight with Orangutans (Hubbard Orangutan Forest), Snoozing Under the Sea (Scott Aquarium), and Ghouls and Glow Dreams in the Desert Dome, as just a handful of examples. And for groups that can't meet the large safari minimum, the zoo even offers a handful of small group safaris.

But the best option may just be glamping in the dreamy tents of Omaha Zoo's Tent Camp Experiences, which come fully outfitted with creature comforts. They even have an adults-only dinner and drinks option for the over-21 crowd.

You don't need a huge crew to take advantage of Birmingham Zoo's private sleepover experiences — just a handful of friends — since the minimum for their Zoo Snoozes is 20 campers ages five and up. Birmingham's Zoo Snooze is an outdoor camping experience, and campers will need to bring their own tents, sleeping bags, and gear (although the zoo has a limited number of tents available for rental). Guests arrive at 7 p.m. to set up their campsites before getting into the fun part, which includes fun, games, educational activities, and a nighttime zoo tour and early morning zoo experience the following day.

Before heading home, take advantage of that next-day zoo pass to do something locals love talking about: feeding the zoo's most colorful avian residents, the Australian lorikeets. "[T]hose little birds are cute and it's a great little exhibit if you've got a fearless kid who wants to feed something that's a rainbow with beak and claws," as one Google review advised.

After my experience at the Tulsa Zoo, it seems to me like every zoo should be hosting sleepover parties since it's truly the best way to check out nocturnal animals that would otherwise be asleep during most standard zoo visits. But sadly, many zoos still haven't caught on. To find the best of those who have, I started by checking out the websites for zoos in major cities across the United States. After compiling a list of zoos with sleepover programs, I scoured the corners of Tripadvisor, Reddit, Google Maps, and Facebook to see what folks were saying about them and then chose the most gushed-over sleepovers among them.