Volume 2, No. 19. October 11, 2002
Head
to headless competition
The gauntlet has been thrown down.
The Louisville Zoo in Kentucky had attracted the highest attendance for Halloween
events among AZA-accredited zoos, peaking at 89,500 people in 2000. But last
year, rainy weather dropped attendance at Louisville Zoo’s event to 78,900.
Meanwhile, Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island, took on a jack
o’ lantern festival and with help from unseasonably warm weather drew 80,000
in its first year.
“It’s great that a lot of people are going to zoos for Halloween fun;
I think that’s a great sign,” said Lisa Bousquet, director of marketing
and public relations at Roger Williams. Said Louisville Zoo’s Director
of Marketing Maureen Horrigan: “We’re going to kick her butt this
time.”
To be fair, Louisville is at a distinct disadvantage in this friendly competition.
Roger Williams’ year-old event started last night and runs 22 nights through
October 31. Louisville Zoo’s 21-year-old festival kicks off tonight and
runs only 14 nights through October 30.
Backing
down
What started as a series of scary scenes has gradually taken on more of a storybook
theme at the Kroger’s World’s Largest Halloween Party in Louisville.
“It’s an alternative for 3- to 6 year olds,” Horrigan said. “We
tried to do a haunted house a couple of years ago, and they wouldn’t go
through it.” Two of the events’ highlights have to do with horses.
One is the park’s antique carousel, which for the Halloween nights runs
backwards under black lights. “We wanted to Halloweenize it, but there’s
not so much we could do with a carousel,” Horrigan said. Two years ago
the zoo tried the backward route, and while it didn’t invite much ridership,
adding black lights last year did. “It really attracts your attention as
you’re walking on the trick-or-treat route,” Horrigan said. The carousel’s
band organ music is replaced by such Halloween hits as “Monster Mash”
and the Wizard of Oz theme. Despite its backward run, the carousel has not caused
undue discomfort to young ones’ stomachs, Horrigan said. “Which is
amazing when you consider they are eating their way through the park.”
The zoo’s other singular offering is the headless horseman. The zoo hires
three riders and three horses for the month, and they take turns galloping out
of the woods at night to run alongside the train for a stretch before disappearing
back into the woods. Being at a zoo, the horses are required to go through a
30-day quarantine before they are stabled on property; however, their nightly
train chases do not disturb the other animals, who already are off exhibit for
the night. “The horses are the one animal we guarantee you’re going
to see,” Horrigan said. “During Halloween that’s our exotic collection.”
That’s
a fact, Jack
Roger Williams galloped ahead in the contest for attendance thanks to a few
heads: 5,000 to be exact. That’s the number of carved pumpkins on display
on a three-acre woodland trail in the Jack O’ Lantern Spectacular.
Created by U.S. postal worker John Reckner of Oxford, Massachusetts, the display
had been an annual tradition in his hometown for 14 years. In 2000, with attendance
outgrowing Oxford’s town square, the exhibit moved to Salem, Massachusetts,
“which is pretty much Halloween Central,” Bousquet noted. But Reckner
was having trouble grappling with the logistics involved in staging such a display
for 20,000 visitors, and when a Rhode Island tourism official saw the display
and heard Reckner’s concern, he offered a home at the zoo in Providence.
“It’s really a perfect marriage,” Bousquet said. “Not only
was the site wonderful, but it was an opportunity for them to partner with an
organization that could provide the service they needed, that could handle admissions
and security and marketing and promotion, all the things he and his family were
having trouble keeping up with. They are fantastic artists and carvers.”
And hardworking. Pumpkins tend to go bad in a matter of days, so the Reckner
family does replacement carvings throughout the event, going through a total
of 250,000 pounds of pumpkin. Outdated spheroids become compost or enrichment
toys for the zoo’s collection of animals. The jack o’ lanterns and
some 300 intricately carved pumpkins are set in 26 scenes based on themes such
as Middle Earth, baseball, dogs, Egypt and Western America.
Pulling in 80,000 guests in 21 nights, the Jack O’ Lantern Spectacular
netted $200,000 for the zoo in its first year, Bousquet said. “Nobody had
no way of knowing how successful this could be. We were just thrilled, thrilled
with the response.” So inexperienced were the organizers that they grappled
with queue issues as lines to get in the exhibit lengthened to an hour long
on many nights. This year the zoo is putting up a large screen to show animal
footage and zoo trivia contests for queued guests and will offer them karaoke,
too, while costumed actors roam through the crowd.
Despite the long lines, the zoo benefited last year from instantaneous word-of-mouth
thanks to the exhibit’s exit being located next to its entrance, Bousquet
said. “People exiting would tell people waiting without prompting, ‘It’s
worth the wait. Stay in line.’”
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LLC
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