How do I properly parse a yaml file that can't Marshall to []string?

Question

So I'm looking to parse a yaml file for my job, and being fairly new to Golang I am a bit stuck... Im used to being on python all the time so some concepts are still dragging in my head for Go. But I have the following issue ...

So I have this yaml file I am trying to parse and Im running the following ... I created the go struct using yaml-to-go. So I have this ..

type Application struct {
    Environments []struct {
        Name               string   `yaml:"name"`
        RulesEngineTargets []string `yaml:"rulesEngineTargets,omitempty"`
        Zones              []struct {
            Name        string `yaml:"name"`
            CloudURI    string `yaml:"cloudURI"`
            Deployments []struct {
                Name        string `yaml:"name"`
                VipTemplate string `yaml:"vipTemplate"`
            } `yaml:"deployments"`
        } `yaml:"zones"`
    } `yaml:"environments"`
    Apps []struct {
        Name         string   `yaml:"name"`
        Path         string   `yaml:"path"`
        Route        string   `yaml:"route"`
        NumDeploys   int      `yaml:"numDeploys"`
        EcpVersion   string   `yaml:"ecpVersion,omitempty"`
        ExcludeZones []string `yaml:"excludeZones,omitempty"`
        EpaasFile    string   `yaml:"epaasFile,omitempty"`
        Version      struct {
            Path     string `yaml:"path"`
            JSONPath string `yaml:"jsonPath"`
        } `yaml:"version,omitempty"`
        Service string `yaml:"service,omitempty"`
    } `yaml:"apps"`
}

And I keep getting this error

  line 231: cannot unmarshal !!str `m3-TEST1...` into []string
  line 239: cannot unmarshal !!str `m3-TEST2...` into []string
  line 247: cannot unmarshal !!str `m3-TEST2...` into []string
  line 260: cannot unmarshal !!str `m3-TEST1...` into []string

The error seems to be coming from the excludedZones field in the yaml ..

rulesEngineTargets: [m2-rules-eng.test.com, m4-rules-eng.test2.test.com]
    zones:
      - name: m3-TEST1-zone1
        cloudURI: m3-Test1.com
        deployments:
          - name: m3-TEST2-zone1-green
            vipTemplate: "{{.route}}-green1.test.com"
          - name: m3-TEST1-zone1-blue
            vipTemplate: "{{.route}}-blue1.test.com"

What am I missing in my code to make this work right? Im fairly lost, is it something wrong with the parsing on the '-' character?

Here is my full code 

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "gopkg.in/yaml.v3"
    "log"
    "os"
)

type Application struct {
    Environments []struct {
        Name               string   `yaml:"name"`
        RulesEngineTargets []string `yaml:"rulesEngineTargets,omitempty"`
        Zones              []struct {
            Name        string `yaml:"name"`
            CloudURI    string `yaml:"cloudURI"`
            Deployments []struct {
                Name        string `yaml:"name"`
                VipTemplate string `yaml:"vipTemplate"`
            } `yaml:"deployments"`
        } `yaml:"zones"`
    } `yaml:"environments"`
    Apps []struct {
        Name         string   `yaml:"name"`
        Path         string   `yaml:"path"`
        Route        string   `yaml:"route"`
        NumDeploys   int      `yaml:"numDeploys"`
        EcpVersion   string   `yaml:"ecpVersion,omitempty"`
        ExcludeZones []string `yaml:"excludeZones,omitempty"`
        EpaasFile    string   `yaml:"epaasFile,omitempty"`
        Version      struct {
            Path     string `yaml:"path"`
            JSONPath string `yaml:"jsonPath"`
        } `yaml:"version,omitempty"`
        Service string `yaml:"service,omitempty"`
    } `yaml:"apps"`
}

func main() {
    file, err := os.ReadFile("r42.yaml")

    if err != nil {
        log.Println("action failed: ", err)
        return
    }

    var apps Application
    err = yaml.Unmarshal(file, &apps)
    if err != nil {
        log.Println("action failed: ", err)
        return
    }

    fmt.Printf("Here are the Results: %+v\\n", apps)
    //for i := 0; i < len(apps.Apps); i++ {
    //  fmt.Println(apps.Apps[i].Name)
    //  fmt.Println(apps.Apps[i].Route)

}