Chester Zoo has inadvertently gone viral for advertising a ‘child predator tour’.
The zoo in Upton-by-Chester is one of the UK’s largest, covering 51 hectares, and has over 30,000 animals from more than 500 species.
Its website lets visitors book day tickets in advance, with extras including the red panda experience, a snow leopard breakfast, a behind-the-scenes visit to the elephant house, and even the chance to be keeper for a day.
However, one opportunity the zoo probably didn’t intend to promote was a tour involving… child predators.
The predator tour is advertised online with the description: ‘Discover the iconic predators of the animal kingdom and their prey in our very unique guided tour.’
It involves coming ‘face-to-face’ with some of the zoo’s ‘most iconic animals’, such as its family of Sumatran tigers, while expert tour guides share ‘fascinating facts’ about the hunters.
Among the booking options, visitors could select from adult, child, and carer options, but the wording was rather unfortunate, to say the least, leading to the zoo becoming the butt of the joke.
Taking to X with a screenshot of the website, @MartynHolland_ mocked: ‘lets all go to chester zoo for the ….. child predator tour’.
In the replies, many were baffled as to how the ‘staggering’ blunder made it onto the site, with @aviculor writing: ‘they really didn’t catch that while typing it out, huh’.
‘Really could have worded that better hahahah’, laughed @YknotDias.
@Scabby_McSnatch argued they ‘HAD to know what they were doing there’, while @jammusnu branded the oversight ‘hilarious’.
Since the so-called child predator tour – costing £25, while the adult predator tour costs £30 – was discovered by social media users, the zoo has taken action.
Now, when you try to book the big-cat experience, the ‘predator’ detail has been removed from the list, advertising the options simply as adult tour, child tour, and carer tour.
A spokesperson for Chester Zoo admitted that the tour had been ‘unfortunately named’, confirming the mistake was corrected as soon as it was noticed.
They explained that a default naming system was used to title the tour, leading to the mishap.
Chester Zoo has been contacted for further comment.
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