Cookie Policy

1. Introduction

Fota Wildlife Park CLG (“FWP”, “we”, “our”) uses cookies and similar technologies on our website to improve your browsing experience, provide essential site functionality, and help us understand how visitors use our site.

This Cookie Policy explains what cookies are, how we use them, the types of cookies we place on your device, and how you can manage your cookie preferences. This policy should be read alongside our Privacy Notice.

2. What Are Cookies?

Cookies are small text files placed on your device by a website you visit. They are widely used to make websites work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site. Cookies can be “session cookies,” which are deleted when you close your browser, or “persistent cookies,” which remain stored until they expire or are deleted.

3. How We Use Cookies

We use cookies to:

Ensure the website works correctly and securely.
Remember your preferences during and between visits.
Improve the performance of our website.
Analyse how visitors use our site so we can improve it.
Support online ticket purchases, memberships, and donations.

We do not use cookies to collect sensitive personal information such as financial details.

4. Types of Cookies We Use

a) Strictly Necessary Cookies

These cookies are essential to provide the services you request, such as ticket booking and secure login. They do not require your consent.

b) Performance and Analytics Cookies

These cookies collect information about how visitors use our website, for example which pages are most visited. We use this data to improve our website and services. We use Google Analytics 4 (GA4), which uses anonymised identifiers rather than the older __utm cookies.

Examples:

Cookie Name	Expiration Time	Description
_ga	2 years	Used by Google Analytics 4 to distinguish users.
_gid	24 hours	Used by Google Analytics to distinguish users for reporting.
_gat	1 minute	Used to throttle request rate.

c) Functionality Cookies

These cookies remember your preferences and past activity on our website.

Examples:

Cookie Name	Expiration Time	Description
exp_last_activity	12 months	Records the most recent visit to the website.
exp_last_visit	12 months	Records the most recent visit to the website to improve user experience.
exp_tracker	Session	Tracks data through the current session.

d) Targeting/Advertising Cookies

We may use advertising cookies to deliver relevant advertisements and measure campaign effectiveness. These will only be set with your consent.

5. Legal Basis for Using Cookies

Under the ePrivacy Regulations and GDPR, we can store strictly necessary cookies on your device without consent. For all other cookies (performance, analytics, functionality, and advertising), we rely on your consent.

When you first visit our website, a cookie banner will ask you to accept or reject non-essential cookies. You may change your preferences at any time using our cookie settings tool or by adjusting your browser settings.

6. Managing Cookies

You can control and manage cookies through your browser settings. Most browsers allow you to:

See what cookies are stored on your device.
Delete all or specific cookies.
Block cookies from being set.
Block third-party cookies.

The following browsers' support sites explain how to manage cookies:

Google Chrome
Mozilla Firefox
Safari (macOS)
Safari (iOS)
Microsoft Edge
Opera

Please note that disabling certain cookies may affect the functionality of our website, including ticket bookings and membership renewals.