A night at the Elephant Lodge at West Midlands Safari Park is not simply a stay — it is a portal. One moment you are passing the Museum of Carpet and the turn-off for Kidderminster hospital; the next, your window opens on a sweep of savannah, your neighbours weighing four tonnes and consuming 150 kilos of hay a day.
The glass wall feels less like separation than privilege — a front-row view of one of the world’s oldest matriarchal societies.
The park opened in 1973 when Sophia Loren, her husband, Carlo Ponti and their young son, Carlo Jr. cut the ribbon. Its founder, Jimmy Chipperfield — circus man, RAF pilot, impresario — had already helped to launch Longleat and now brought his own drive-through safari to Worcestershire with a handful of former circus animals: lions, rhinos, camels, wolves and giraffes.
His gamble paid off. Five decades and 30 million visitors later, the park houses more than 165 species, from Britain’s largest mob of meerkats to its biggest walk-through lemur wood, as well as the full safari set.
Elephant Valley is the heart. It is the realm of Five, the veteran female who arrived in 1998; Coco, a bull with sabre-like tusks; and recent imports, Suzy and Gitana, whose Belgian upbringing has not dimmed their love of dust-bathing. Their range is meticulously designed: an outdoor pool, mud wallows, dust pits, and a state-of-the-art elephant house which would not shame the pages of Architectural Digest.
At dawn, they emerge through mist like ancient ships, moving with a deliberation which makes human gestures look hurried.
Rooms with trunks
The lodge itself blends warmth with spectacle — thatched, timbered, open-plan, with a king-sized room downstairs and bunks above.
Dinner is neatly prepared in jars, ready to cook when you please. At night, a TV channel streams infrared footage of other animals. Breakfast is left silently on the deck before 8am, synchronised with the elephants grazing outside. Guests need not lift a plate — the team clears everything discreetly. It won’t come as a shock that the lodges have twice won Tripadvisor’s Travellers’ Choice Awards.
Mornings bring surprises. Before the public arrive, lodge guests are invited to a private sea lion show. California sea lions are born entertainers — slick, acrobatic, impossibly charismatic — and their splashy curtain calls feel like a personal encore.
The safari can be taken by car, but the striped safari bus comes with commentary worth hearing. We began with Congo buffalo, twitching their ears like semaphore, before rolling to zebras whose foals can run within hours of birth. Ankole cattle followed, their horns so immense they seemed sculpted for a gallery. The guide relished a story: rhinos once discovered a way past the cattle grid and strolled up to reception, a tale still told with a grin.
The Philippine spotted deer, delicately speckled and reputedly worth a million dollars, stood in contrast to the painted dogs dozing under a bush, their Mickey-Mouse ears disguising their ruthless stamina-hunting style. Lions appeared next, three cubs nestled against the pride. Nearby the elephants gathered, prompting the guide’s favourite question: how many muscles and tendons in a trunk? The answer (100,000) silenced every guess.
The adventure continues
Guests receive gold wristbands allowing unlimited theme park rides and discounts in shops and restaurants. Dodgems rattled, the Venom Tower plunged, and the Zambezi Water Splash drenched us — a giant dryer stood ready to warm the soaked.
The Safari Walk added hippos wallowing and cheetahs pacing. The African Walking Trail, launched in 2022, brought buffalo, zebra and rhino closer still. On the Discovery Trail, penguins, bats, lorikeets, marmosets and red pandas waited, plus the eerie Twilight Cave. Children especially revel in feeding lorikeets nectar as the birds clamour to perch on their arms.
For all its theatre, the park carries weight. As a member of BIAZA and EAZA, it follows Europe’s strictest welfare and conservation codes. Its cheetah and dhole habitats sit on land designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest, preserving heathland as much as predators.
The Safari Academy — five classrooms opened in 2017 — teaches everyone from nursery pupils to university researchers. Breeding programmes have produced everything from Sumatran tiger cubs to Indian rhino calves.
For children and adults alike, whether waking to elephants or drifting off to lions, the stay is unfiltered magic — the thrill of proximity and the stories carried home. It layers nostalgia with science, theatre with husbandry, reminding visitors that conservation is not abstract but measured daily in feed, care and vigilance. And when you finally pull away, what remains is the memory of the glass wall, the breath-fogged dawn, and the sound of trunks tearing hay.
A fleeting communion with the ancient, the immense, the patient wild.
Stays from £500 per night. safari-lodges.co.uk
