One of the coolest things places we visited (upon recommendations from Ken and Daniel) was the Siberian Tiger Park. The Siberian Tiger Park is a reserve with many tigers living in large pens. Visitors take jeeps safari-style through the reserve and can see the tigers close-up. As soon as we got there Sean and I were able to hold a baby tiger which was awesome!
The tiger park was quite different from anything you might find in America, however, as visitors were encouraged to buy live chickens and cows to feed to the tigers and to watch them hunt. PETA would have a field day with this kind of thing I am sure. Fortunately/Unfortunately we didn't remember to buy the prey before the tour started and nobody else in our van bought anything either. If you check out Daniel's blog from last year, however, you can see some pretty cool pictures of his experience at the tiger park including this picture (Daniel I hope it is ok that I am using your picture):
One of the most entertaining things was watching how excited the Chinese people in our van got whenever we got really close to a tiger. They would rush to that side of the van and start snapping pictures and taking video. I was half-tempted to stop watching the tigers and start taking pictures of them. I can only imagine if it were pandas instead of tigers!
I have seen Panda tourist mayhem first-hand and while yeah it is pretty funny at first, and you end up photographing them more than the Panda's, it also gets pretty bloody annoying after a while too.
"Hey look at the Pan..." *100 Chinese tourists barrell in front of you, snapping photos and completely blocking your view*
Marcus