what is the zoo s hours on the hollween theme and what are the hours in indianapolis

The best name I found in a quick survey was one used by the Toledo Zoo in Ohio and the Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in South Carolina: Lights Before Christmas.Īt Lincoln Park Zoo, ZooLights, in the past decade, has gone from underwhelming me to almost the opposite. The Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, offers Zoo Nights & Lights, while the Potter Park Zoo in Lansing, Mich., serves up Wonderland of Lights. Indy's is Christmas at the Zoo.īut the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio goes with Wildlights. While almost every institution calls its Halloween special event Boo at the Zoo, says Feldman, the year-end holiday lights shows get an array of names. Many other zoos use some variation on ZooLights (Zoolights, Zoo Lights) or Holiday Magic (Festival of Lights, Christmas Town, Christmas Lights Festival). And they allow zoo staffers to exercise their naming genes. They remind people that zoos are open year-round.

They bring in traffic during comparatively barren winter weeks. The Zoo Guild Auxiliary 'were the ones that started it,' says spokeswoman Carla Knapp, 'kind of as a way to help raise some funds and get us through the winter.'Īs it turned out, they could have raised a lot more funds if they had patented the idea.Ībout half of the 223 members of the AZA now do a holiday lights show, says spokesman Steve Feldman. Where did this begin? You don't hear this phrase often, but credit (or blame) Indianapolis, where the Indianapolis Zoo was the first, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums believes, to offer a holiday lights event, in 1968. The monthlong high-wattage Brigadoons helped Brookfield and Lincoln Park set attendance records or near records last weekend, partly a response to the 60-degree weather but also because such events are etching themselves onto family holiday calendars. The displays were so popular that second, impromptu light shows took place outside the grounds: the slow parade of headlights moving slowly toward the parking lots. What once seemed like a simplistic attempt to convince people that something special was going on now strikes me as sort of sweet, a good-natured seasonable communal event in a culture where noncommercial examples of those are rare. Holiday light shows pay ever more potent tribute to Thomas Edison and his wondrous candle replacement.Īnd I am, I must face it, getting softer. Theme parks add roller coasters every year. The zoos have not been standing pat: Holiday glowfests in the vicinity of wildlife have not only become the norm nationwide, they're a little bit like amusement parks. First, we've all been doing a great job making the December nights warmer, meaning it's a nicer outing.

What is the zoo s hours on the hollween theme and what are the hours in indianapolis