{"id":88769,"date":"2025-12-15T17:17:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T17:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/88769\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T17:17:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T17:17:07","slug":"san-antonio-zoo-welcomes-nearly-30000-visitors-for-opening-weekend-of-congo-falls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/88769\/","title":{"rendered":"San Antonio Zoo welcomes nearly 30,000 visitors for opening weekend of Congo Falls"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN ANTONIO \u2013 The San Antonio Zoo welcomed tens of thousands of visitors during the opening weekend of the new Congo Falls<\/a> exhibit from Friday to Sunday.<\/p>\n

This is the first time gorillas have been seen at the SA Zoo in 35 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw nearly 30,000 guests over the weekend, with multiple events at The Ralston, where guests looked over the Congo Falls festivities and enjoyed the drone shows on both Friday and Saturday evenings,\u201d said Hope Roth, vice president of Marketing, Public Relations, Internal\/External Communications & Community Affairs. \u201cOne event at The Ralston even had a surprise visit from a gorilla at the top of Mays Family Silverback Peak on Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Roth said numbers on Sunday were not as high as the other days due to the weather, it was an overall \u201cgreat weekend at the zoo.\u201d<\/p>\n

KSAT also reached out to the zoo to ask about certain behaviors the gorillas were exhibiting that had been concerning some viewers, such as banging on the enclosure glass.<\/p>\n

When asked why they were acting like this, Roth said, \u201cWhat you\u2019re seeing is a gorilla expressing big gorilla feelings! This is a natural behavior that the bachelor troop has always exhibited, even at their previous home. Banging on objects to make loud noises is one way gorillas communicate with one another or to get a reaction from visitors.\u201d<\/p>\n

KSAT visited the gorillas on Saturday morning, where confetti cannons and pyrotechnics welcomed them back to the San Antonio Zoo. Hundreds of families eagerly waited in line to see Congo Falls.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe City has been waiting thirty-five years for the return of the gorillas, and we\u2019re so excited to see thousands of thousands of people are here,\u201d said CEO and President of the San Antonio Zoo Tim Morrow.<\/p>\n

The two-acre habitat is filled with greens and a 70-foot-tall Gorilla Viewing Tower for guests to watch the seven gorillas inside.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been waiting for more than a year for this to open. We\u2019ve started a countdown at home,\u201d said one family who showed up to the grand opening in custom-made gorilla shirts.<\/p>\n

The new effort from the zoo drew recognition from county, city, and state officials while promising to continue to support conservation efforts around the globe.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully, we have babies in the next couple of years and continue to grow this group, because we built a big habitat with that future in mind of having big families,\u201d Morrow said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re already talking about what\u2019s next for San Antonio Zoo,\u201d Morrow continued. \u201cWe have the entire other side of 281 on the zoo ground still to build out. So we have been saying we want to bring elephants back in a big way, so that\u2019ll be in our future. But we have some really great designs coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody asked us yesterday, \u2018How are you going to top Congo Falls? We just said just wait,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Read also:<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 The San Antonio Zoo welcomed tens of thousands of visitors during the opening weekend of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83,8702,69],"class_list":["post-88769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-san-antonio-zoo","tag-things-to-do"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}