ROBOT ZOO at Mall of Asia
Written by Iman Dugeno. Photos by Iman Dugeno Photography. Originally published in our old blog, www.tripsandtravels.info.
My sister and her family came over to Manila for her husband Dennis’ business trip. They brought their adorable (and very entertaining) daughter Dindin, of course, figuring that it’s also a good time for another family vacation. They spent the week with me here in Taguig and originally, they had planned to go to Subic to check out the Zoobic Safari. When they booked the flight several months ago, though, we didn’t realize that it was going to be a long weekend and as a result, a lot of people were expected to go home to their respective provinces that day, hence, throngs of people are at the terminal. A friend of mine advised us against going to Subic because since we didn’t have a car, we may have a hard time commuting because of the long queues waiting for rides.
So as an alternative, we just went to Mall of Asia instead. We had a rather hearty lunch (thanks to Pepay) and just went to Nido’s Robot Zoo (also sponsored by Nickelodeon). We paid P200 pesos per head, which was good for the whole day already. But the place is rather small so it won’t really take people that long to check out everything.
There were several robotic animals in that zoo, which was an interesting trade-off to our supposed safari experience. There were also some activity sections where families can enjoy doing things together, like the air-pump propelled squid race and the turtle race (where you wear a plastic turtle shell, go on all fours and race to the finish line). My sister, Sigrid Says, and I even tried “Hang Time” where we literally just hanged on a bar and the machine was timing us. Hahaha! It’s nice to just play and pretend to be kids for awhile.
Dindin had fun running around the place, figuring out the robots and throwing adhesive balls to the wall (I think she was
the only one there who didn’t run out of energy after several rounds of squid racing. LOL!) All in all, though it wasn’t as upfront as it would’ve been if our original plans for Zoobic pushed through, at the end of the day, we all still had fun and Dindin got to learn some things, too. It was still an afternoon well spent with the family. 🙂
Robot Zoo Fees:
Rates per head – P200
Robot Zoo + Nido Science Discovery Center – P500
The Zoo is open from 11am to 8pm, from Monday to Sunday.