6th Birthday Party at Miller Park Zoo

This year, my son's birthday was held at the zoo. They have 2 options for parties. One is outdoor at their covered area right after you enter the zoo ($125 for 20 people for 2 hours; $7/person extra up to 40 people). The second option (the one we chose) is in the large classroom ($175 for 20 people for 2 hours; $9/person extra up to 40 people). Both of these options include a treat bag for each child. You can purchase carousel rides for $1 per rider. You can also get an animal encounter for 20 minutes with 2 animals of your choice (in advance) for $75. We were going to choose to add both of these add-ons to make our party experience complete, but it was raining that day so we decided to just get the animal encounter.
Members of the Miller Park Zoological Society receive a 10% discount.

My son wanted a minion party. And I think it turned out pretty great! (But that's a post for another time.) We called 3 months in advance and both times on Saturday were already booked. However, Sunday was wide open. We chose the later time (1pm-3pm) because the early one on a Sunday just seemed too early (10am-12pm). Well, we ran into quite the issue about 2 days before the party. They had double booked the room and accidentally written ours on the schedule from 10am-12pm. This was very stressful and I still get sick whenever I think about it. They did not handle this in the correct way at all. The simple fact is that we booked first so we should have gotten to keep the room. But no! That's not how it worked out. We ended up with a much smaller room that was half way across the zoo. It turned out to not be a HUGE deal, but I can tell you that after the party was over, I was definitely thinking about how the party would have gone much smoother if we had been in the larger room. They did, however, wave the fee for the animal encounter.

Overall, it wasn't the party that I wanted and I'm very disappointed in it. I would say that I wouldn't recommend using the Miller Park Zoo as your party venue. However, one of the employees did say that they're surprised this doesn't happen more often which leads me to believe it's not a very common occurrence so I suppose you could give it a try.