Loro Parque: The Complete Guide to Tenerife's Flagship Zoo

What Loro Parque Actually Is

Loro Parque sits on the western fringe of Puerto de la Cruz, in the Punta Brava district, where the town quietly transitions from residential streets into a thick, humid garden of tropical planting. From the outside, the gates suggest a moderately large theme park. Inside, it expands considerably: the complex covers around 13.5 hectares and contains environments ranging from a climate-controlled penguin Antarctic to a savannah enclosure built around a glass tunnel that puts visitors directly beneath gorillas and other animals.

The park opened in 1972, founded by Wolfgang Kiessling with a core focus on parrots. That origin still shows: Loro Parque maintains one of the largest parrot collections anywhere on earth, with hundreds of species and subspecies housed in a dedicated section of the park. The name itself translates roughly as 'Parrot Park', though the attraction has long since expanded far beyond that brief. Today it functions as a full zoological garden, with orcas, bottlenose dolphins, sea lions, chimpanzees, white tigers, and a penguin colony of more than 300 birds.

Arriving and Getting Oriented

The most convenient connection from central Puerto de la Cruz is the free road train, a small tourist vehicle that runs between the seafront area around Playa Martiánez and the park entrance. It runs frequently during park hours and saves a 20-minute uphill walk through residential streets. If you are driving from the north of the island, follow the TF-5 motorway toward Puerto de la Cruz and look for Loro Parque signage; parking on site costs approximately €7 per day.

Visitors coming from the south of Tenerife, particularly from Costa Adeje or Los Cristianos, face roughly a 60 to 75-minute drive via the TF-1 and TF-5 motorways. Several operators sell coach-and-entry packages from the southern resorts for around €55–65 per adult; these include a return transfer and can simplify the day if you are not renting a car. TITSA public buses also connect the south coast to Puerto de la Cruz bus station, from where the road train or a short taxi completes the journey.

Gates open at 09:30. The park closes at 17:30, with last entry around an hour before closing. Five to seven hours is a realistic estimate for a thorough visit, though families with young children who stop at every enclosure often find a full day disappears faster than expected.

The Animals: What to Prioritise

The orca and dolphin presentations are the highest-capacity shows and fill up quickly. These take place in large covered stadiums, so they offer useful shelter if the afternoon clouds in from the north, which happens regularly in Puerto de la Cruz even in summer. Whether you consider these shows ethically acceptable is a personal decision worth making before you book: Loro Parque has faced significant criticism from animal welfare organisations over the keeping of orcas in captivity. The park positions these as educational programmes supporting conservation; that framing is contested and visitors should engage with it on their own terms.

The gorilla habitat is architecturally striking. A transparent tunnel runs beneath an island enclosure where western lowland gorillas move freely overhead and around visitors. Naturavisión, a separate 3D cinema in the park, is a different attraction. At mid-morning, when the animals are fed and active, the gorilla enclosure rewards patience: a silverback moving at close range through the viewing zone is one of the more memorable wildlife moments the park offers.

PinguiNatur is the park's penguin exhibit and is kept at a constant temperature of -1°C inside the main viewing area. The contrast with Tenerife's ambient warmth is dramatic enough that children often find the transition surprising. The colony holds hundreds of penguins across multiple species and is one of the largest breeding colonies in Europe. The glass-fronted underwater observation area shows the birds moving at full speed, which is a completely different creature from the shuffling gait on land.

The parrot section, though no longer the centrepiece it once was, still contains genuinely rare birds. Hyacinth macaws, Spix's macaw-related conservation displays, and dozens of less-familiar species are housed in walk-through aviaries where the noise, colour, and close-proximity of the birds creates a sensory experience that is difficult to replicate in a standard zoo context. The smell here is distinctive: warm feathers, damp foliage, and the slightly acidic undertone of fruit-fed birds in an enclosed space.

How the Experience Changes Through the Day

Morning visits, from 09:30 to roughly noon, offer the best combination of animal activity, cooler temperatures, and thinner crowds. Most large mammals and primates are fed in the morning and are correspondingly more mobile. The pathways are quieter, photography is easier without crowds in the frame, and the tropical landscaping catches low-angled light that makes the setting considerably more attractive than it looks in the flat midday sun.

Midday to early afternoon is when coach parties from the southern resorts tend to arrive en masse, and the queues for the main shows lengthen noticeably. The central food and beverage outlets become congested. If you arrive at opening and plan strategically, you can complete most of the priority exhibits and the first round of shows before this peak. Alternatively, use the midday lull to eat at one of the quieter restaurants toward the back of the park and return to key exhibits as the afternoon crowds thin.

By 15:00, the character of the park shifts again. Family groups with small children begin to leave, and the pace slows. The last animal shows of the day play to smaller but often more attentive audiences. The late afternoon light in the tropical garden sections is warmer and better for photography than the harsh midday glare. If you can stay until 17:00, the park feels noticeably more spacious in the final hour.

Practical Details Worth Knowing

Loro Parque is open every day of the year from 09:30 to 17:30, with no annual closures on public holidays. Standard adult admission is €44 for visitors aged 12 and over, with children aged 3 to 11 priced at €32. Children under 3 enter free. Canary Islands residents receive a reduced rate of approximately €22 for adults and €16 for children on presentation of valid regional ID at the ticket desk.

Wheelchair users can hire a chair free of charge (refundable deposit required). Pushchairs and strollers are available at around €5 per day plus a deposit. Mobility scooters can be booked in advance by phone, require a deposit and photo ID, and need to be reserved at least three days before your visit. The main pathways are paved and generally manageable for pushchairs, though some sections of the older parts of the park involve slopes.

Food inside the park is priced at attraction-standard rates, which means noticeably higher than the cafes and restaurants in central Puerto de la Cruz a short distance away. Bringing a packed lunch is permitted; there are picnic benches in several areas. The park's restaurants seat large numbers and generally cope with peak demand, but queuing at busy midday periods is common.

Photography at Loro Parque

The park rewards photographers willing to work early. The gorilla tunnel, the penguin underwater gallery, and the parrot aviaries all involve mixed ambient and artificial lighting that benefits from a lens with a wide maximum aperture. The orca and dolphin stadiums are covered and dim; a fast prime or a zoom with image stabilisation handles the conditions better than a kit lens at its limit.

Flash photography is prohibited in most indoor animal areas, and the glass barriers in several exhibits create reflection challenges. Positioning the lens perpendicular to the glass and using a lens hood against the surface eliminates most of this. The tropical garden planting throughout the park, particularly in the older sections near the original parrot enclosures, makes for compelling macro and botanical photography that many visitors overlook entirely.

Who Should Think Twice Before Visiting

Visitors who have strong ethical objections to large marine mammals, specifically orcas and dolphins, being kept and trained in captivity will find the orca stadium at the centre of the park impossible to ignore. Loro Parque has been the subject of sustained international criticism regarding its orca programme. The park's official position frames the programme as conservation-oriented and argues that captive animals serve an educational function; critics, including several prominent cetacean welfare organisations, dispute this framing directly. If this is a concern, be aware that the orca and dolphin facilities are prominent parts of the park, not peripheral ones.

Solo travellers without a particular interest in wildlife or zoological institutions may find the admission cost hard to justify for a half-day experience. At €44 per adult, Loro Parque is one of the more expensive single-attraction tickets on the island. For context, the same budget covers a full day at several of Tenerife's other attractions combined. Budget-conscious visitors should weigh the cost carefully against their actual interest in the animals, rather than treating it as a default activity.

Travellers who are primarily interested in Tenerife's natural landscape rather than a managed attraction may find greater value in exploring the island's outdoor spaces. The Anaga Mountains and the landscapes of hiking routes across Tenerife offer genuinely wild encounters with the island's endemic ecology at a fraction of the cost.