Taking a short ride on the wild side

The tourists at the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park were staring at the giraffes. More important, the giraffes were staring back.

“I thought one was trying to tell me something,” said Mary Sullivan, visiting San Diego from Portland, Ore., with her carpenter husband and their two young sons. “We were a lot closer than we expected.”

The family Sullivan was aboard the park’s latest attraction, the African Express, as it meandered 2.5 miles through ersatz African terrain. The 104-passenger open-air vehicles replaced the park’s venerable monorail two weeks ago.

The new feature, part of a $40-million upgrade of the park, follows two trends in the zoo and animal-park industry: more effort to simulate the natural environment and greater “immersion” of patrons by getting them closer to the animals.

For all of their involvement in conservation programs to save endangered species around the world, both the zoo and the park still depend on attracting a maximum number of paying customers.

Sprawled over 1,800 acres in the San Pasqual Valley east of Escondido, the Wild Animal Park is nonprofit but has enormous overhead. You can’t feed elephants on chicken feed.

Attendance has not fully recovered from the dip suffered after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. In 2001, the park had 1.6 million visitors, but that total fell to 1.3 million in 2003 and has stayed at 1.4 million for the last three years.

The monorail, dubbed the Wgasa Bush Line Railway, had been part of the park since its opening in 1972. But in recent years it had a series of maintenance problems, including a breakdown that stranded patrons a long way from the snack bar, curio store and bathrooms.

The new ride is 25 minutes, compared to more like 50 minutes on the monorail. Modern patrons like their enjoyment in short doses.

The ride is not free, as the old one was. Basic admission to the park is $28.50 for people 12 and older and $17.50 for children 3 to 11. Those who buy ride tickets outside the gates can get them for $4.50. But those who wait until they are inside to buy their tour tickets must go to the Simba Station, where tickets are $10 for ages 12 and up and $5 for ages 3 to 11.

The Ingle family of Oklahoma City thought it was vacation money well spent. “It’s so much better than looking at the animals in cages,” said Amy Ingle, accompanied by her computer technician husband and their son.

From the monorail, the animals were several hundred yards away. Some shy animals were rarely seen from such a distance. Not so with the African Express, which even lets visitors observe animals in the pens where they are taken for veterinary care.

“Here’s the difference: Now you get to see their faces,” said Michael Ahlering, the park’s director of operations.

Even bashful types like the addax, roan antelope and red lechwe are viewable. Ditto the vaal rhebok, red flanked duiker and, yes, even the blue duiker!

Of course, wild animals are both wild and animals. They may not be on their best behavior for tourists. On this day, park patrons were treated to an up-close view of the hind end of a Patterson’s eland -- an antelope -- while it was defecating.

During mating season, there will be other possibilities for patrons to view life as it is lived on the savannas and in the forests of Africa.

Park workers still remember the day when, during a photo shoot for a car company advertisement, a male rhino decided to mount a gray Nissan.

tony.perry@latimes.com