If only I had a dollar for every time we've been asked if the San Diego Zoo lived up to the hype. Our answer? Yes. And no. The zoo really is impressive. More animals than you can count. We did the double-decker bus tour—twice—which saved us a lot of walking time. My two favorite animals were babies—an okapi (the littlest we've seen) and a gorilla. And we've now seen all the giant pandas that live in the U.S. We heard rumors that the viewing line can be really long during their scheduled play time, so we caught them while they were napping. The koala exhibit was amazing—we've never seen that many koalas all in one place. The girls kept losing count around 20. We enjoyed the monkeys and apes. Their exhibits are beautiful. The whole zoo is really lush and tropical. The sky ride is fine, but you can't see many animals from it. Overall? Great zoo but probably not our favorite.

View photos of our trip to this zoo