Best Safari Parks in the UK

Published: 22 August 2026

The first time a baboon sat on my wing mirror at Longleat, I nearly stalled the car. My kids thought it was the best five minutes of the entire holiday. That is the thing about safari parks that a zoo simply cannot replicate – the animals are on your side of the glass, and sometimes they are on your car.

This guide covers safari parks specifically – places where you drive or walk through open enclosures, not zoos with paths between pens. If you want the UK’s best conventional zoos, I have a separate guide to the best zoos in the UK covering London Zoo, Chester and Edinburgh. Some of the parks below blur the line a little, and I have said so plainly where that is the case, because most “best safari park” lists do not bother to make the distinction and it genuinely changes what kind of day out you are booking.

I have visited six of the ten parks below myself over the past few years; the rest are included on the strength of solid, current research into what they offer and what they charge. Prices are correct as of August 2026 – every safari park in this country prices by date, so treat the figures as a guide and check the calendar before you book.

Best UK safari parks at a glance

Woburn Safari Park

Woburn sits inside the wider Woburn Abbey estate in Bedfordshire, close enough to London and the M1 that it works as a day trip from the capital. One ticket covers both the “Road Safari” – your own car, driven at walking pace past lions, elephants and rhino – and a separate “Foot Safari” section you walk around after parking up.

Ticket prices (check latest prices)

Woburn prices dynamically by date rather than publishing a flat rate, so I am not going to invent a number here – book through the official site and the calendar will show you the exact price for your visit date.

Soft-top and convertible cars are allowed through most of the drive but barred from the Kingdom of Carnivores and African Forest sections specifically – you will be redirected to a viewing area instead. Motorbikes are not permitted anywhere on the drive. A “Little Ranger Rovers” mini-driving experience for children launched in 2025 and is still running, which is a nice touch if you have a car-mad six-year-old who has been begging to steer.

Longleat Safari Park

Longleat opened in 1966 as the first drive-through safari park outside Africa, and it still feels like the benchmark the others get measured against. The drive takes you past lions, tigers, wolves and a genuinely impressive Big Game Park with southern white rhino, and there is a separate walking section plus the wider Longleat estate – gardens, a maze, a house tour – if you want to make a full day of it.

Ticket prices

Standard advance online pricing runs from around £39.95 for the main season. Longleat strongly pushes advance booking – online prices run roughly 15% cheaper than the gate – and pre-booking is essential for specific events like the Festival of Light. Walk-up tickets are available on the day subject to availability, but the site is cashless, so bring a card.

The vehicle rules here are the strictest on this list: soft-top convertibles and cars with soft vinyl sunroofs are barred from the drive-through entirely, not just from certain sections. If your only car is a convertible, check Longleat’s own vehicle guidance before you plan the trip around it – I have seen people turned away at the gate over this.

West Midlands Safari Park

Based near Bewdley in Worcestershire, this is the one I would point a family towards on price alone. One combined ticket covers the “Safari Drive” (your car) and “Safari Walk” (on foot), plus there is a separate rides area with a wristband add-on if the kids want more than animals. My youngest spent most of our drive with her nose against the glass waiting for the giraffes, then went quiet altogether when a lion ambled past close enough to fog up the window.

Ticket prices

Online adult admission starts from £17.40, with the ride wristband an extra £8.75 per person. A 12-month flexible ticket starts from £32, which pays for itself after two visits.

A new White Lion Viewpoint opened on the walking trail in late 2025 with a redesigned pride habitat, and paid overnight lodges overlooking the enclosure have since been added if you want to extend the visit. Soft-tops are barred specifically from the Carnivore section of the drive, and every car, soft or hard top, has to keep its roof up for the full route.

Knowsley Safari Park

Knowsley, on Merseyside just outside Liverpool, is built around a five-mile drive where lions, rhino, camels and ostriches wander loose around the cars – the longest drive route of any park on this list. It is also the slowest, in a good way; we were still crawling past the baboon enclosure twenty minutes after we planned to be having lunch. One ticket also covers a “Foot Safari” area with tigers, giraffes, sea lions and an Amur Tiger Trail, plus play areas and animal talks, so it is not drive-only despite the reputation.

Ticket prices

Advance online booking costs £22.38 per adult, rising to £25.38 if you turn up and buy at the gate on the day. Annual membership starts from £87.

Blair Drummond Safari and Adventure Park

Blair Drummond, near Stirling, is the only dedicated safari park in Scotland (Highland Wildlife Park near Aviemore also has a drive-through reserve, but it is primarily a conventional wildlife park), and it is worth the drive if you are already north of the border. The safari drive runs alongside a separate adventure park with rides and animal encounter areas, so it doubles up well as a full day out rather than just a drive-through stop.

Ticket prices

Standard adult admission is £23.50, with child tickets (3-15) at £16.50 and concessions at £20.25. Booking is online only, in advance, and non-refundable, so pick your date carefully.

Vehicle rules are more specific here than at most English parks: soft-tops are allowed through the African and Asian reserves but barred from the macaque and lion reserves, where you will be directed around instead.

Yorkshire Wildlife Park

I want to flag this one clearly: Yorkshire Wildlife Park, near Doncaster, has no self-drive element at all. It is walk-through, and it gets lumped into “best safari park” lists mostly on reputation rather than mechanics. That said, it is home to the UK’s largest polar bear reserve, and the open-plan enclosures for lions and Amur tigers give a scale you do not get at a conventional zoo, so I have kept it in.

Ticket prices

Online adult tickets run from £27.99 to £29.99 depending on the date, tiered by weekday, weekend and school holiday. Buying at the gate costs more – between £31.49 and £33.49 – so book ahead if you can.

Port Lympne Hotel and Reserve

Port Lympne, run by the Aspinall Foundation near Hythe in Kent, is 600 acres of walking trails past gorillas, rhino, giraffes and spectacled bears, with an optional truck safari you can add at booking rather than one bundled automatically into every ticket. It is also the only park on this list where you can stay overnight – there are lodges and a hotel on site, so you can do an early or late safari when the animals are more active and the day visitors have gone.

Ticket prices

Standard admission is £32.73 online or £36.36 at the gate; adding a Gift Aid donation takes it to £36 online or £40 at the gate. Annual passes start from £75 for adults. Check at checkout whether the truck safari is included in your specific ticket type – Port Lympne sells walking-only and walking-plus-safari options separately, and it is easy to book the wrong one.

Africa Alive

Africa Alive, at Kessingland on the Suffolk coast, is an East Africa themed reserve run by the Zoological Society of East Anglia, which also operates Banham Zoo. It is walk-through rather than drive-through, spread across open paddocks rather than caged enclosures, with rhino and giraffe as the headline animals.

Ticket prices (check latest prices)

I could not pin down a confident current single-adult price for this one – the figures I found conflicted with each other, so rather than guess, check the official booking page directly before you travel. Tickets are sold through zsea.org, the Zoological Society of East Anglia’s shared booking platform, even though the park’s own site sits at africaalive.co.uk.

Cotswold Wildlife Park and Gardens

Cotswold Wildlife Park, at Burford in Oxfordshire, is the odd one out here in a good way – it combines a walk-through wildlife collection with formal Victorian gardens, so it works as much for a couple wanting a nice afternoon as it does for a family safari day. There is no drive-through element.

Ticket prices

Standard gate admission is £19.50, or £17.50 if you buy an e-ticket online in advance – a straightforward saving for booking ahead that most of the other parks on this list also offer in one form or another.

Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm

Noah’s Ark, on the edge of Bristol, is genuinely a farm rather than a safari park, but it earns its place here because of its paid safari-style truck ride, which sets it apart from a standard petting-farm day out. I would set expectations honestly: this is closer to a family farm with a safari-branded extra than a true drive-through park, and that is a fair trade if you have younger children who are not quite ready for the bigger cats at Longleat or Knowsley.

Ticket prices (check latest prices)

Pricing is tiered by date and I found conflicting figures across sources for this one, so rather than publish a number I am not confident in, check the live booking widget on the official site before you travel. I also could not confirm whether the safari truck ride is bundled into standard admission or sold as a separate add-on – check this directly with the park before you build a day around it.

Drive-through or walk-through – what’s the actual difference?

Not every park on this list lets you stay in your car, and it is worth being clear-eyed about which type you are booking before you set off.

True drive-through parks – Woburn, Longleat, West Midlands, Knowsley and Blair Drummond – let you drive your own vehicle at a walking pace through open enclosures, with predators like lions and tigers sometimes metres from your window. All five also have a walking section once you park up, so none of them are drive-only.

Walk-through parks – Yorkshire Wildlife Park, Africa Alive and Cotswold Wildlife Park – work more like an open-plan zoo. You walk between large, naturalistic paddocks rather than caged enclosures, but you are on foot the whole time.

Hybrid experiences – Port Lympne and Noah’s Ark – are primarily walk-through, with an optional vehicle-based safari (truck or Land Rover, not your own car) available as an add-on.

If getting close to a lion from inside your own car is the whole point of the trip for you, stick to the first group.

Vehicle rules that catch people out

This is the part most articles skip, and it is genuinely the difference between a smooth day and being turned away at the gate. Every drive-through park bans motorbikes outright, without exception, at every park I checked. Soft-top and convertible cars are treated very differently from one park to the next:

• Longleat bars soft-tops and cars with soft vinyl sunroofs entirely – no exceptions.
• West Midlands Safari Park bars soft-tops from the Carnivore section only, and requires every car to keep its roof up throughout.
• Woburn allows soft-tops generally but redirects them around the Kingdom of Carnivores and African Forest.
• Blair Drummond allows soft-tops through the African and Asian reserves but bars them from the macaque and lion reserves.
• Knowsley does not publish a section-by-section soft-top policy the way the other four do – check current guidance directly before booking if you drive a convertible.

If your only car is a soft-top or convertible, phone the park before you drive there. A wasted trip is a worse outcome than a five-minute phone call.

Planning your visit

The drive-through portion of a visit typically takes 1.5 to 2 hours on its own. Add walking trails, rides and shows and a full day at most of these parks runs 3 to 5 hours, so build in time for a proper lunch stop rather than trying to do it on the way to somewhere else.

Shoulder season – March to May, or mid-September before the October half term – tends to give the best balance of decent weather and thinner crowds. Weekdays in school term time are consistently the quietest, and animals have indoor shelters, so light rain will not ruin your visit, though sightings can be less active in bad weather.

If you are likely to visit more than twice in a year, an annual pass is usually worth doing the maths on. Port Lympne’s pass starts from £75 against a £32.73-£36.36 single ticket, so it pays for itself in a little over two visits. Knowsley’s starts from £87 against a £22.38-£25.38 single ticket, closer to four visits to break even – still worthwhile if you live within an hour or two of the park and go more than once a season.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is the best safari park in the UK?
Longleat has the strongest claim as the original and most complete UK safari park, with the widest range of drive-through predators plus a full estate of extra attractions. For value, West Midlands Safari Park is hard to beat at £17.40 for combined drive and walk admission. For the longest drive route, Knowsley’s five-mile safari is the one to pick.

Can I drive through in a soft-top or convertible car?
It depends entirely on which park you are visiting. Longleat bans soft-tops outright. Woburn and Blair Drummond allow them through most sections but redirect them around specific predator enclosures. West Midlands requires all cars, soft-top or not, to keep the roof up. Always check the specific park’s vehicle policy before you travel if this affects you.

Is a safari park worth it compared to a zoo?
The main difference is proximity – at a drive-through safari park, animals like lions and rhino can come right up to your car, which a zoo’s enclosure-based viewing cannot replicate. Zoos typically hold a larger total number of species in a smaller footprint and are better suited to a shorter visit on foot. If you want the UK’s best conventional zoos, see my zoos guide.

Can I get out of the car during a safari drive?
No, not at any of the parks in this guide, and it is strictly enforced. Windows must stay up while you are in a predator section, and you can only get out of the vehicle at designated rest points or car parks. Staff will drive alongside and ask you to leave if you break this – it happens most often with people trying to get a photo through an open sunroof.

Is South Lakes Safari Zoo in Cumbria still open?
No. South Lakes Safari Zoo closed permanently on 31 December 2024 after years of animal welfare concerns, and its animals were rehomed to other collections. If you see it listed as an open attraction elsewhere, that information is out of date.

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