Lion & Safari Park

From Lion Park to Lion & Safari Park

The operation began as the Lion Park, a smaller enclosure closer to Lanseria, and carried that name for years of Johannesburg childhoods. Its history is not clean: a visitor was mauled after opening his window to photograph a lion, and on 1 June 2015 Katherine Chappell, a visitor who had opened her window against the park's rules, was killed by a lion that lunged through the gap. Later that year the park banned cub interactions — then restored them in 2016 when, in the words of its own chief executive, the survival of the business was at stake after visitor numbers dropped.

In 2016 the park also moved to a 600-hectare site in the Cradle of Humankind and took the name it trades under now. The practical line a visitor needs from all of this is the one the park enforces hardest: windows up inside the predator enclosures, no exceptions, and keep the vehicle moving.

What you actually see inside

The reserve splits in two. The predator section is driven in your own car or in the park's open vehicles: enclosures holding more than 80 lions including the rare white strain the park is known for, cheetah, spotted and brown hyena, wild dogs and jackal. Beyond them, a separate area holds the mixed plains game — giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, impala, gemsbok, blesbok and warthog — which is where the ostrich and giraffe feeding happens and where the photographs with sunset light get taken.

The terrain is deliberately tame, and the park's own materials make the point that no 4x4 is needed; a rental sedan does the self-drive without drama. Lions are most active at feeding time and in the last hour of the day, which is exactly why the sunset drive exists.

The guided drive in the park's open vehicle

The park runs a one-hour drive at $35.3 (R575) and a two-hour at $43.3 (R705), with half rates for over-60s and under-12s free one per adult. The guide drives the route through the lion and cheetah enclosures, stops inside the vehicles' sightlines, and times the loop to reach the lions at the 12:00 feeding, which is the single most reliable animal moment of the day. The two-hour version adds the plains side and the giraffe deck; if you are deciding between them, the extra hour is the better spend with children or photographers.

Book at the gate or through the park's online rates page — no slot times exist, so the queue at 09:00 on a weekend is the only queue you will meet.

Self-drive in your own car

At $24.5 (R400) the self-drive is the cheapest activity in the park and the one Johannesburg families with a car default to. You loop the predator enclosures at your own pace and can repeat the circuit as often as the gate hours allow; the rules that matter are windows up, no feeding from vehicles, and stay in the car — rangers patrol and enforce all three. The trade against the guided drive is knowledge and positioning: you will see lions, but you will not always know what you are looking at, and you cannot stop where the vehicles stop.

Many visitors split the difference — one self-drive loop early, then the guided drive at 11:30 to be positioned for the feeding.

Sunset drives and the priced extras

The two-hour sunset safari at $48.2 (R785) runs Saturday, Sunday and public holidays only, which is a planning constraint rather than a marketing one — arrive on a Tuesday expecting it and you will be rebooked onto the standard drive. Around the drives sit the add-ons that fill a full day: a one-hour quad at R1,280 (drivers 16 and up), horseback safaris from R760 to R1,330 with an 85 kg rider limit, giraffe feeding at R85 a bag, and an Elephant Sanctuary package at R2,345 that bundles a separate venue in. The restaurant and the curio domes sit at the entrance and are open on the free entry, so a coffee-and-giraffe-deck visit without any ticket is a real, if thin, outing.

This park spent years as the face of South Africa's cub-petting trade, and pretending otherwise would not serve you. The record: cub interactions were banned late in 2015, restored in 2016 because — in the chief executive's own words — the business could not survive without them, and the anti-canned-hunting group Blood Lions publicly condemned the park and the people who visited it for those interactions. What has changed since is visible on the park's own rates page, which now sells drives, quads, horseback and packages and lists no cub interaction at all; visitors posting in the last two years report the same on the ground, though the claim has never been confirmed in the park's own words. The wider argument about captive-lion breeding in South Africa is bigger than this gate and this page does not pretend to settle it. What we can tell you plainly: the part of this park worth your money — the drive-through with a guide — is also the part that involves no handling of animals at all. If the ethics of the interaction era trouble you, book the game drive and skip anything that promises to put a baby animal in your arms.

- Book the drive, not an interaction — the drives are the park's core product and need no animal handling to justify them - Treat any hands-on offer as a decision, not a default — check what is actually being sold on the day; the official grid lists none - Keep windows up and stay in the car — the rule exists because of what happened in 2015, not despite it

The variable that decides the day is the drive time, not the park: the reserve itself needs three hours, and everything over that is the road. The city end of the trip is where the routing options actually differ, and where the day-trips hub helps you chain the R512 corridor into a full plan.

The park sits on the R512 (Pelindaba Road) in the Kalkheuwel area, between Lanseria Airport and the Hartbeespoort direction, and — a small confession the park's own site never resolves — it prints no street address anywhere. Navigate by GPS to -25.8322, 27.8888 or by the brown signs on the R512; the park says it is about 13 km from Lanseria Airport, and the tour operators budget 30–45 minutes from Johannesburg. Parking is free and on-site, and there is no shuttle from the gate to the enclosures — your car or the park's vehicles are the only way round.

Buying is by card or online through the rates page; the park publishes no cancellation policy at all, which is worth knowing before you prepay an activity. Phone signal holds across the reserve. One Johannesburg-specific caution: load-shedding can drop the traffic lights on the R512 corridor, so treat a dark robot as a four-way stop and give yourself ten extra minutes on the road.

• GPS gate: -25.8322, 27.8888 on the R512 (Pelindaba Road)
• About 13 km from Lanseria Airport; 30–45 minutes from Johannesburg by the operators' budgets
• Gates 08:00–17:00 every day of the year; sunset drives weekends and public holidays only
• No street address is printed anywhere official — navigate by GPS, book online, pay by card

- The gate is free because the activities are the business. Entry, parking, the restaurant and the curio domes cost nothing; every rand the park earns is on the activity grid [lionandsafaripark.com/rates/]. - Under-12s ride the drives free, one per paying adult — a family of four with two children pays two adult fares, not four tickets [lionandsafaripark.com]. - Over-60s get 50% off everything, including the sunset safari, which makes the senior rate on the sunset drive — $21.8 (R355) — cheaper than the standard two-hour morning drive [lionandsafaripark.com/rates/]. - The sunset safari is a weekend product. Saturday, Sunday and public holidays only, so a weekday visit ends on the standard drive schedule, planned around it or not [lionandsafaripark.com/rates/]. - The park has no printed street address. Not on the site, not on the rates page — the location is published only as GPS and the R512, which is why every directions box on this page leans on coordinates [lionandsafaripark.com; OpenStreetMap].

Book the morning drive, watch the 12:00 feeding, and eat at the restaurant before you decide what the afternoon is. North over the ridge is Hartbeespoort; minutes down the same road is Lesedi Cultural Village with its 16:30 programme; the Cradle of Humankind caves run tours until 15:00, closed Mondays. The day trips hub ranks all of them by drive time, the things to do list slots the park among the city sights, and Johannesburg with kids makes the under-12-free case for you.

If the trip is still a plan rather than a booking, the half-day tour with free cancellation is the cheapest way to hold the date.