Are you planning a first trip to the Omaha Zoo? You may be looking to do an overnight trip like I did with my daughters to visit the Omaha area. If you are in the Kansas City area the Zoo is only about 2 ½ hours away. Have you heard great things about the zoo and want to know how it compares? My girls and I were very impressed with everything it had to offer! We hope you like our list of tips!

Thank you to Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium for offering us a free visit. This post contains affiliate links at no extra cost to you. It just means if you buy something from a link from our website, we may earn a small commission.

Planning a First Trip to the Omaha Zoo

Below you will find not only some tips but also some MUST-SEE exhibits that were new to us! We like to visit the Kansas City Zoo. We learned that Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium had so much more for us to see!

What to wear to the Omaha Zoo:

As bad as you want to pack your summer sandals, wear tennis shoes and get your kids in tennis shoes. You will get a lot of steps in without realizing it but most exhibits are pretty close to the entrance if you are looking for things that the Kansas City Zoo doesn’t have.

What to bring:

Depending on the time of year, be sure to check the weather. Pack some ponchos since they are easy to fold up without weighing you down.

Our family brought our Loungefly backpacks because it leaves our hands free and we can even fit in a water bottle because there are things to touch, see, and do that holding less is better. A fanny pack is great too but it might leave you holding your water bottle.

Also, pack some light snacks. Once your tummies start growling, you might go through 4-5 exhibits before you get to the restaurant you want to eat at. We did see lots of families pack lunches. So if you have a light backpack you could add a sandwich and some chips to it which is usually what we do when we visit the KC Zoo.

What to see and do:

Be sure to have your kids pick up their free passports! Even the older kids had fun going to the different stations getting it stamped and earning a free card! We hope to scrapbook them into our Junk Journals! It is a great way to have fun and learn about the different animals at the different stations.

The Desert Dome

Does Omaha Zoo have half of an Epcot ball? What is that thing? Those are some of the questions we heard on our way to the zoo it is the Desert Dome. The Desert Dome was very cool! It is a great way to see lots of cool up close animals and the Zoo did a great job at keeping a path with everyone going in the same direction to walk through (almost like a line cue at Disney). There are also areas with cool fans when you walk by them that feel good. My girls and I walked very fast to skip the scary snakes.

The Rainforest and the Swamp

This was such a cool experience. The pictures and video do not give it any justice but you are pretty much open and there with all of the animals, waterfalls, and scenery. It is such a cool zen area with some gorgeous animals and birds. You can walk through the top and the bottom area and get so many cool videos and photo opportunities.

As for the swamp, it was dark and had a cave area in it too. My eyes struggled to adjust to the light but it was worth going through to see the white alligator with blue eyes! We were told there are only 12 of them in the entire world!

Scott Aquarium

Don’t skip out on checking out the aquarium. You get to touch some sea creatures and see lots of fun aquariums, and of course, the tunnel was very cool! There was a sleeping shark right above us so we took some fun selfies there!

I love aquariums in general and this one felt like a fancy Sea Life smack in the middle of the zoo. It is a must “sea” (pun intended)!

Berniece Grewcock Butterflies and Insects

If you love butterflies, you will LOVE this area of the zoo. Every year our family enjoys visiting the local Butterly Festival so this was similar to a version of a year-round festival!

I love that this butterlfy posed for me and wanted me to know it was in fact a butterfly.

The first half is much better than the insect half if you are scared of spiders (like me). You get to walk through a couple of areas of butterflies from South America and all over the world! If you are lucky one could land on you while you are walking around! This is an enclosed area and they do a double check to make sure none of them are stuck to you when exiting.

SUPER CLOSE with the Big Animals

There is a Giraffe herd room where the zoo walks the giraffes indoors and you can go into this room and be right next to the giraffes. This is near the giraffe feeding exhibit if you want to feed them you can do that too!

Then there is an Elephant Family Room. This is another room where we were able to see a momma elephant and two babies right near us! These experiences are free and super neat!

MORE TO SEE:

There were more exhibits to walk through and if we had another day in Omaha we would have been able to get it all done! Perhaps, I should say, if we had more energy we could have got it all done. There were eight of us girls and the night before we did SO much on the dime and I will be sharing how we saved so much money!

That was just a few of our favorite things! We had eight of us together and were doing all we could to get the most bang for our buck during our overnight Omaha trip. We skipped the rides and trains since we have those in Kansas City and with eight of us it could add up without a membership and we were on a tight budget.

Lunch for my daughters and I cost us about $30 without drinks (since I promised them Starbucks on our way out of town) so it was very affordable to have a cool lunch experience at the zoo and to also cool down!

How to SAVE Money on your NEXT trip to Omaha:

Besides the ZOO, you can use the code ENZA and purchase a Get Out Pass from getoutpass.com and save up to $60 off and be able to do SO many things in Omaha including the water park, bowling, ax throwing, breakout room, putt-putt, the Children’s Museum and SO MUCH MORE! We like to get these passes when traveling because it is the BEST way to save for our trip! You can use the code ENZA and they have them for Omaha and even KC if you are local! 

Email me if you have any questions about this, I will be posting more soon!