These dream days are being snapped up as birthday and anniversary gifts at Blackpool Zoo faster than a pelican's bill can close around a tasty fresh fish.
In the pecking order, it's the primates and elephant sections which tend to get booked up quicker than birds and small mammals – and that's before the giraffes arrive.
My date coincides with an unseasonal monsoon, shrugged off by zookeeper John Chaston who's preparing a fish breakfast for the pelicans.
Tempting as it is to duck out of the downpour, zoo keepers can't, not with all those hungry mouths, and bills, and beaks to fill, come rain, hail or shine.
John considers it a privilege to work there, even on yet another wet summer's day. Fresh air, exercise, interest, no working day the same. "I could be stuck behind a desk gazing at a computer screen with all the windows shut and the blinds down," he says. Quite.
What's good about the scheme is a) the fact it's got past the health and safety nannies who have red taped so much of the fun in life and b) all the money raised goes to Friends of Blackpool Zoo for allied charities or other worthy causes such as helping keepers develop other skills or having study tours elsewhere.
It would be nice to give the animals the occasional break, too, but most of the residents here are now fifth or sixth generation bred in captivity and wouldn't recognise The Wild if it bit them on the nose.
And, of course, some are endangered. Look at what's happening to gorillas and orang utans in their native, but hostile, environment.
Zookeeping calls for passion and commitment. People may pay £150 for the chance to be a keeper for a day but proper keepers do so for love of animals, tending charges with care, respectful of boundaries, and the fact these are wild (if not in the wild) creatures.
Daily inspections check on welfare, from a tapir with a sore eye to a baby rhea which has perished amidst as-yet unhatched eggs. "When I look at how some people look after their children," muses John, "our animals get better care."
He has a soft spot for two engaging little Kiwi parrots who are infamous in native New Zealand for their destructive ways.
"Parrots are intelligent and they're very good at dismantling things like satellite systems and gardens. They are extremely destructive but it's all motivated by curiosity," he adds.
"They need plenty of stimulus." One gets some stimulus by mistaking my finger for some minced meat and promptly mimics my yelp.
Forty or so keepers at the zoo look after 1,500 animals – around 400 species in all.
And the figure's rising. The fact that so many animals breed is testimony to their environment – there's a brand new baby pelican and eight little rhea when I arrive.
If that's not "aw" factor aplenty, I join keeper Lauren Ogden to meet Ferguson, the Red River hog, all of three months old, and Millie the Brazilian tapir, who both like having their tummies tickled.
The highlight, bar assisting keeper Laura Whatmough feeding raisins to ring tailed lemurs, is getting up close and personal with Bimbo, the Californian sealion king. OK, so he comes close second to keeper Khaled Fawzy, 26, but chance would be a fine thing.
Khaled was 15 when he started working here and now has the sealions, particularly the females, eating out of his hand, and adds: "They're bottomless pits when it comes to fish. The males get through about 20kg a day, the females up to 12kg a day. Food is key to getting their attention and feeding time really captures the interest of visitors.
"We try to make people appreciate them in greater depth, including the problems they face.
"Most of the animals here couldn't be re-introduced to the wild. And the wild is under threat, of deforestation, development, pollution, civil war.
"Zoos play a vital role in conservation and the ongoing protection of endangered species. They are refuges."
* for more information on becoming a keeper for a day telephone (01253) 830801.

jacqui.morley@blackpoolgazette.co.uk