Travel with Angela Lansbury: How to keep your family and group safe travelling to zoos, safari parks and theme parks

Monday, December 12, 2022

How to keep your family and group safe travelling to zoos, safari parks and theme parks

Today I read in the newspapers about two accidents. A man fell off a cliff having hiked to the summit and taken a photo. He fell and did not survive. Another story was a worrying time for zoo officials and onlookers, with a safe end. A child in Adelaide, Australia, dropped a mobile phone into a panda cage and climbed in to retrieve it - fortunately the child was fine.

What can be done as prevention and cure?

Prevention

1 Phone Design - Lanyards?

Redesign mobile phones and covers with matching lanyards like camera straps in the old days. If a neck strap is too dangerous, a wrist strap, or at least a connector, like a dog lead which can be stretched and retracted.

2 Hat Design - Hoods?

School hats should have regulation fastening so you cannot lean forward and drop the hat, nor can it be blown away in the wind. A jacket with an attached hood saves loss.

2 Safety Briefing

Brief children, and adults, in groups, that if anything is dropped near an animal enclosure or fairground round you must call staff, not enter.

3 Helplines

Put signs with a helpline number or button to summon staff for help in an emergency - and ban from the premises for the entire group or family if this is misused. If you are a guide or in charge of a group, keep the emergency number in your phone.

4 Barriers

Build enclosures with a double barrier and or fenced dip so that anything dropped falls in the gap away from animals and anybody from outside climbing in is away from animals and machinery. A glass wall would be a good solution.

Can't be done? Yes, it can. You can make barriers so that you cannot climb in, an others so you cannot drop anything inside.

Glass Barriers

You have glass walls in oblong aquariums for fish. Many places have tunnel aquariums which you walk through. Snakes are displayed in glass enclosed boxes like big aquariums.

Ditches

What about ditches? Singapore's Night Safari has invisible ditches or valleys around animals.

As for glass cleaning, atriums in modern buildings have systems for washing the glass.

Transport

Another system is, instead of having children walk around a zoo, take them in a vehicle such as a train.

Useful Websites

News of Incidents and Accidents

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11527761/Railwayman-59-plunges-300ft-death-taking-photos-wife-Saturday-hike.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11527963/Adelaide-Zoo-panda-enclosure-Wang-Wang-Fu-Ni-locked-boy-went-phone.html#newcomment

ASIA

Chiang Mai Night Safari in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Night Safari, Singapore