A Safari Park Day Trip From Roanoke, With Ice Cream After

By Jennifer Bryerton

Virginia Safari Park is just under an hour up I-81. We've been many times, and this is how we do it now.

Jennifer is raising four kids in Charlottesville and wrote the book on family outings in Virginia, literally. She founded CharlottesvilleFamily in 1998 and RoanokeFamily in 2026.

A bison once left a smear across our back window that required a scrub brush. Not a wipe. A brush.

That is Virginia Safari Park in one image, and I say it with affection. The park sits in Natural Bridge, just under an hour up I-81 from downtown Roanoke's City Market, and we have been more times than I can count. The three-mile drive-through is the famous part and it earns the reputation. Llamas will have their heads in your car before you are properly through the gate. Clean the car later. That's the only correct answer, and once you accept it the whole day gets easier.

Car or wagon, which is the actual decision

Most people don't realize there's a choice. You can drive your own vehicle through, or take the guided wagon. We've done both.

The wagon feels more exposed, which is exactly the appeal for some kids and exactly the problem for others. You get something close to a hundred-degree view instead of squinting through a windshield, and everybody gets a window seat, which settles an argument before it starts. And no feed ends up in your car. That is not a small thing.

The car has its own case. You control the pace, you can stop when somebody needs a minute, and a nervous kid has a door to hide behind. First visit with a small child, I'd take the car. After that, try the wagon at least once.

Buckets: fewer than you think

Standard advice online is a bucket per kid. I'd say one bucket per two kids. Sharing sounds like a recipe for squabbling and it isn't, because kids need the break. It is a lot of excitement. Handing the bucket over to a sibling gives a five-year-old a legitimate reason to sit back for a minute and just watch, which they will need somewhere in that three miles whether or not they'd admit it.

Hold on tight near the zebras. Greedy guses, every one of them.

And ask at the entrance when you buy your feed what time the keeper chat is, then plan your loop around it. It's the easiest thing in the park to miss and one of the better reasons to go.

The ostriches are the ones that get me

You cannot appreciate an ostrich from a television programme or a library book. The scale of them doesn't survive the translation. Up close they look like something from another world, and you end up admiring the eyelashes. Actual eyelashes, on a bird taller than you are. Every visit, same reaction.

Safari Village, and why we slow down here

The walking half is where our day actually lives.

The budgie aviary first. You buy a seed stick, hold it out, and wait, and then they land on you. Arms, shoulders, the top of your head, the stick itself until it's bending under them. Buy more than one stick per kid, because they get stripped fast and there is nothing worse than an empty stick with birds still circling. If you have a child who might find it overwhelming, walk through once without a stick so they can watch before committing.

The tortoises are much bigger than a kid expects, and that is the entire appeal. Nobody has ever hurried us past them. The spider monkeys are across from the penguin house, and I'll happily stand there long after everyone else has moved on.

And then the reptiles, where my oldest wants to be a herpetologist and the rest of us stand at the glass while she works out where the snake is. Sometimes this takes a while. They are extraordinarily well camouflaged, and half the time the animal has been in plain sight the whole time.

That patience is the honest counterweight to the drive-through. The safari is loud and fast and slightly chaotic. Safari Village you can slow down, and it's better that way. Let your slowest kid set the pace here.

Book ahead if it's a birthday

If you haven't been in a few years, this is the part that's changed. The park now runs four bookable animal encounters, each limited to a small group, and they are a genuinely good way to mark a birthday or a report card somebody worked hard for.

• Sloth encounter, twenty minutes with Flash and Priscilla, ten in the morning and two in the afternoon, forty dollars a person, all ages. Meet at the sloth house past the café.
• Penguin encounter, twenty minutes, eleven and three, forty dollars, all ages. Outside the penguin house across from the spider monkeys.
• Ring-tailed lemur feeding, twenty minutes, half nine and noon, thirty dollars, all ages, and only six spots per slot, so this is the one to book earliest.
• Rhino encounter, twenty-five minutes, one o'clock, fifty dollars. Ages ten and up with no exceptions, so check that before you promise anything to a nine-year-old.

All four are on top of admission, all four want closed-toe shoes, and late arrivals are not admitted and not refunded. Book through the park's site.

The forty-five minute rule

Safari Village starts bringing animals in about forty-five minutes before the posted closing time. Whatever you've paid extra for, or whatever your kid is most looking forward to, do it early.