‘Panda Palooza’ left D.C.; now it’s Zoo Atlanta’s turn

Mary Barker was determined to see the last remaining giant pandas in the United States, so she kept her foot on the gas. In December, she plowed through torrential rain while driving 18 hours each way from her home in northern Pennsylvania. In between she spent six hours at Zoo Atlanta, which is supposed to return the animals to China at an undetermined time this year.

“It was definitely worth it,” Barker said. “I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

While her adventure may have been a bit extreme, she is far from alone in her desire to visit the pandas while Americans can do so without a passport.

Travel agent Lainey Melnick, 61, flew from Austin, Texas, to Atlanta for the Dec. 8 weekend “just to see the pandas.” She had previously seen them in Washington and in Japan, but knew that Atlanta would be her last opportunity for a while.

Attendance at Zoo Atlanta has been higher than normal the past few months, and that’s “likely” due to the pandas, but other factors, such as weather, could also be playing a role, said zoo representative Rachel Davis.

Anecdotally, there’s no doubt that panda FOMO (fear of missing out) is a motivator. On Facebook groups like the Ultimate Panda Fan, people have been sharing their travel plans and encouraging one another to make the trip. My trip came at my daughter’s suggestion. We made two outings to the zoo during a long weekend explicitly to see the pandas. We met Barker, 59, and her daughter, Helena, 30, on Dec. 11 after a zoo employee commented on how many outof-towners had been visiting.

Because there’s no set departure date yet, the Atlanta zoo is still “in the process of planning ways we will celebrate this very special legacy.” But if the Panda Palooza that Washington’s National Zoo held as a “cele-bear-ation” of its pandas is any indication, the number of arriving panda enthusiasts will go up.

Visits to the National Zoo between Sept. 26 and Nov. 9 — roughly the start of Panda Palooza to the bears’ departure day — increased 179% over the same period in 2022, said Ellie Tahmaseb, a representative of the Smithsonian’s National

Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. More than 250,000 people entered the National Zoo over that six-week period last year, including guests from Alaska, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Guam.

“Although I can’t say definitively this was due to the giant pandas, it’s hard to look at the data and come to any other conclusions,” she said.

The National Zoo had been nearly synonymous with pandas after housing them for more than 51 years. But, the first panda in the U.S. arrived in 1936 when it was brought over by socialite Ruth Harkness, then acquired by Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo, where it died at 16 months old.

Panda diplomacy between China and the United States began in 1972, when Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling were presented as gifts to commemorate President Richard M. Nixon’s historic trip to the communist country. The pair was exhibited at the National Zoo.

Atlanta has had pandas for nearly a quarter-century, with Chinese-born Lun Lun and Yang Yang arriving in 1999, when they were both 2 years old. Their contract is set to expire late this year. Part of the agreement said that any offspring born in the zoo would be returned to China, so five of the pair’s seven cubs have already gone back. The two youngest, Ya Lun and Xi Lun, are now 7 years old and expected to travel to China this year as well.

The zoo anticipates getting “significant advance notice to share” before any actual return dates, Davis said.