LA Zoo Trip for Disneynature’s Monkey Kingdom #MonkeyKingdom

If you’re in the Los Angeles area with kids, I recommend a trip to the LA Zoo! During my Avenger’s press trip last week, we also had the pleasure of screening the latest from Disneynature – Monkey Kingdom. To celebrate the release (in theaters April 17th), we got to head to the LA Zoo for a special tour to visit some Monkey Kingdom cousins – and other beautiful creatures as well! And, you can see that our plush monkeys (Maya, the heroine from Monkey Kingdom) got to tag along with us! Maya loved meeting some of her cousins at the zoo. My personal favorite was her gibbon cousins, the Siamangs! These guys are NOT monkeys (no tail for one); they’re apes. And, they are certainly fun to watch swinging around with those long arms! But what is REALLY fun about them is their AMAZINGLY loud song! We learned from their keeper how important communication among primates and how the Siamang actually have a call – where different members have different parts of the song. Their throat sacs fill with air and the sound can carry all throughout the zoo! It was incredible to watch!!

It’s our very own #MonkeyKingdom here at the LA Zoo (though these are apes). Enjoy the call of the Siamang!! #AvengersEvent

A video posted by Sara (@momendeavors) on Apr 10, 2015 at 1:56pm PDT

We also learned a lot about the Black Howler Monkeys! It was fun watching the monkeys go after grapes from the keeper while she chatted with us! The males are black and the females are blonde! So interesting! The LA Zoo also has a fabulous group of chimpanzees. It’s actually one of the largest in North America. It was AMAZING to watch them – especially once the keepers came for lunch time! They had been chilling on the rocks, but perked right up for their bananas and green bell peppers! And, that’s not nearly all of the zoo’s primates. We also saw Langurs, Guenons, Colobus Monkeys and Red Uakari  – all cousins of the monkeys in Monkey Kingdom! Of course, there was other fun to be had at the zoo too. We saw hippos (my favorite), tigers, koala, kangaroos, elephants and ate lunch with giraffes. The zoo was actually more lush than I was expecting (since it’s actually a botanical garden too) and it’s really quite large (at over 133 acres)!!! PERFECT for some family travel fun in LA! We even did some fun monkeying around ouselves – riding the carousel with our stuffed monkeys. The carousel is SO SO fun – with all kinds of unique options like a dung beetle, anemone fish, or praying mantis to ride on! I’m sure many of the adults and kids were quite surprised to see 25 adults with stuffed monkeys riding with no kids! Hahaha! (Thanks Tammilee for the fun photo)!Hope you had fun getting a glimpse into the LA Zoo and all the fun primates there! Now, I encourage you to plan to go see Disneynature’s Monkey Kingdom between April 17th & 23rd! For every ticket sold during opening week, Disneynature will make a donation to Conservation International to help protect monkeys and other endangered species in their natural habitats (like some of the amazing creatures we saw at the LA Zoo). Learn more at http://nature.disney.com/monkey–kingdom.

Monkey Kingdom opens in theaters nationwide on April 17th!! Plan to take your family!!