Finally posting about the pandas at Beijing Zoo! I have visited three times and of course always have spent plenty of time panda-viewng^ My first visit was on my first trip to Beijing in November 2017, we went on a 3-day organised tour, then had a final day for anything else before travelling home – of course I spent that at the zoo seeing the pandas. Then I was back in Beijing for a few days in my November 2018 trip and Beijing Zoo was the first thing I did. Then in September 2023 I was travelling with a friend who had somehow never seen pandas before, of course, we also went straight to the zoo on our first day.
November 2017
I was super excited to visit Beijing Zoo for the first time in November 2017 – I’ll eventually do a separate post on the rest of the zoo, but for now, just chatting pandas. The pandas have always been an almost separate section of the zoo, you need to scan your zoo ticket again to get into this area just so they can manage guest flow. I went mid-week in November so it was very quiet, there were maybe only 20-30 other visitors in the panda area during my visit (which looking back sounds crazy!). So there were plenty of open spots at the viewing windows, and because the weather was dry and not too hot, there were pandas both inside and outside to see. There are two buildings to see the pandas in, on my visit there were inside and outside pandas in one, and only inside pandas in the other newer building. You can spend as much time as you like in the area which was great and I looped around the viewing to make sure I saw all the pandas. Annoyingly I didn’t take any pictures of the signs, so I don’t know exactly which pandas I saw, however I do believe one of the younger pandas in the newer building was Meng Lan (the now famous panda at Beijing Zoo) as he had moved there in September 2017, which is super cute^ On this visit the gift shop mostly just had soft toy pandas and a few kids toys, and I *think* there might have been a small coffee counter upstairs but I don’t remember seeing anyone there.
November 2018
Not a whole lot changed between my visits in 2017 and 2018 – the enclosures were the same. The only difference was that I went in the afternoon after arriving in Beijing in the morning whereas in 2017 I went first thing, so this time I seem to have mostly caught panda nap time! Only a couple of pandas were awake during my visit so I really didn’t end up staying too long, plus I was pretty tired as I hadn’t managed to sleep much on the flight. But this was a very nice way to start my trip by seeing some pandas^
September 2023
Again, not a huge amount has changed between 2017/18 and 2023 – you still need to scan your ticket to get into the area, but the tickets are all on your phone now, so it’s scanning the QR code of your entry ticket rather than a paper ticket. The difference with this visit is that it was a Sunday when we visited, so it was very busy, it was also very hot so none of the pandas were outside and not all of them were on show inside – I think we only saw 3 pandas in total. So that was a little disappointing compared with my previous visits. There was a queue of people waiting to see Meng Lan, I joined the queue while my friend went to check with staff that that was what the queue was for – they confirmed, but also said some people had been waiting over 2 hours already on the chance that he might come outside. In the end we decided not to wait, but maybe next time Meng Lan! The cafe area upstairs in the new building has been transformed into a very cute themed cafe, there’s pandas on everything and you can even buy the mugs. With the warm weather I couldn’t resist the super cute ice cream, very tasty! And the gift shop selection had also hugely improved, you can even get the Pandapia soft toys here now which is great and they had the whole range that’s available at Chengdu Panda Base. I really loved that they had a nice range of pins, even a specific Beijing Zoo one with a panda, so I picked that up and saved the soft toy panda buying for Chengdu XD
