San Antonio Zoo gorilla habitat grand opening has families going bananas

SAN ANTONIO – Confetti cannons and pyrotechnics welcomed gorillas back to the San Antonio Zoo on Saturday morning. Hundreds of families eagerly waited in line to see the new exhibit: Congo Falls.

“The City has been waiting thirty-five years for the return of the gorillas, and we’re so excited to see thousands of thousands of people are here,” said CEO and President of the San Antonio Zoo Tim Morrow.

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

“We’ve been waiting for more than a year for this to open. We’ve started a countdown at home,” said one family who showed up to the grand opening in custom-made gorilla shirts.

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.

“Hopefully, 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,” Morrow said.

“We’re already talking about what’s next for San Antonio Zoo,” Morrow continued. “We 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’ll be in our future. But we have some really great designs coming.”

“Somebody asked us yesterday, ‘How are you gonna top Congo Falls?’” Morrow said. “We just said, just wait.”

Read also:

• Go inside the new Congo Falls gorilla exhibit at San Antonio Zoo