00:03At Wingham Wildlife Park, phase one of its multi-million pound expansion has just opened,
00:09inviting in hundreds of excited visitors. So you can already see just how busy and
00:17how excited people are to see the new facilities. We have got tigers in here,
00:22so to the left here we should have a tiger that's sitting just over here which you can see and
00:29then
00:29towards the bottom if you come with me towards the bottom. So you've got the tarantulas here now
00:38it's quite hard to find but I do think that it's about there and then over here we've got some
00:45South Asian fish which is quite exciting but I mean the whole thing is all brand new but what
00:50do the people here think? Everyone seems to enjoy it and it's got different features that I haven't seen in
00:56zoos before.
00:57I like that it's not just about the big cats, it's about like fish and different kinds of stuff.
01:04I really like it, it's just got so much to explore to other people.
01:10Probably been about 15, 16 years since I came here last and it's brilliant.
01:16I really like it, I've been here about three years ago and a lot has changed and it's like you
01:21can see
01:21all the work that's been done to it and everything like that. The brand new indoor area is the first
01:27stage of a major redevelopment at the park. It features purpose-built habitats for some of the
01:32park's most popular animals. We have really good winter traits and we have lots of areas now for
01:36the winter so for doing us these big areas that we're doing now it's nice people can come in and
01:41even when it's a rainy day or cloud they can still come up here and enjoy it. This has been
01:45planned for a long time,
01:46we've had the land now for I want to say three years and then all the planning and that and
01:50going
01:50through and we are now, this is two years in the making this park, two and a half million pounds
01:56to
01:56build it so it's a lot of money and a lot of time and the great thing is it's all
01:59done in-house,
02:00all done by our own team.
02:01Yeah so it's Kingdom of the Big Cats, we played around for a long time with the name for it,
02:07tried to combine sort of the fact that everything up here is from Asia, that at the moment it's all
02:13big cats,
02:13so in the house it's all going to be big cats but around obviously we've got other species
02:17as well like the bears and things so but for the building it Kingdom of the Big Cats felt right.
02:23Park officials say this is just the beginning of an ambitious new chapter with further phases of
02:28the development still to come. With the summer holidays now underway the park is hoping this
02:34attraction will prove a hit with families and as they prepare for winter they hope it makes a
02:39difference come rain or shine. Kristen Hawthorne for KMTV, Wingham.
Comments