Haha we had to go around twice to get any kind of decent shots of the Red Panda. It was our first time at Dudley and we all really enjoyed it, like you said there are a wide variation of animals there.
I have a Sony DSCH400 Bridge Camera Adam. I didn't want to go all out and spend hundreds on an SLR straight the way because to be honest I wasn't sure whether or not this was just going to be another phase I was going through! As far as I can see(it comes with no instructions) there isn't a fully manual mode, so I'm really just using it on the auto settings it provides. It has a huge zoom on it, 63x optical I think and most of my shots are are taken with alot of zoom on them. I'm happy enough with most I've taken so far, but I fully understand that there are limits to what this kind of camera can do.