Being born and raised in Pittsburgh, I have been to the Pittsburgh Zoo many times. This zoo seems to be becoming smaller and limiting the animals it has. For example, no hippos, no walrus, etc.
I have never experienced another zoo because Pittsburgh once had it all. I remember the days of the many roaming peacocks. I only saw one during my 6 hour visit and it was hiding in the woods outside of the aquarium gift shop.
The bear exhibit really leaves much to be desired. It was a great exhibit years ago.
The Asian Forest was completely empty the day we were there. The only enclosure that had anything in it was the very first one. Having been there on a Saturday in July on a day full of events you would think they would keep the animals in the enclosures and leave the maintenance to a slower day or at least stagger it.
The wet paint signs all through the aquarium were an eyesore and nuisance. Who doesn't want to get close to the glass to view the fish.
The tunnel in the aquarium needs some serious sprucing up. The water was dirty, cloudy and the lack of color or other sea life made the experience dismal. They need to add something to the concrete to disguise the food and fish waste.
The stingray exhibit remains my favorite as you cannot say you have been able to pet a stingray before. The one thing that needs to be improved there though is the hand washing station. We stood in line for 10 minutes to wash our hands and then the wet counter, lack of soap and paper towels made it almost impossible to wash our hands.
The Baby Otter exhibit left much to be desired as well. The staff that was sitting in the exhibit could have been answering questions or at least interacting with the visitors instead of reading a book.
Some of the environments seem very small for the animals.
The overall overgrowth of the vegetation made the zoo seem unkempt.
I hope I was just there on an "off" day.