After two months without school, without seeing their friends and without being able to participate in most of the activities that make being a kid so much fun, a trip to the zoo was just what Diego and Alexandra Carlos needed on Saturday.
With the Calgary Zoo opening to a maximum of 4,000 daily guests this weekend, their mom booked a time online for them and the family to visit.
The brother and sister were all smiles as they left the zoo on Saturday afternoon. When asked what their favourite part of the day was, they didn’t hesitate.
“Red panda, they’re so cute,” Diego said.
“They’re like little house cats,” Alexandra added.
In total, the zoo said it expected around 2,500 people to visit Saturday.
Guests are required to buy tickets online in advance, with each ticket getting an assigned time for entering so that the zoo can monitor how many people are inside the grounds at any given time.
Four hundred people are allowed through the gates every hour and spokeswoman Alison Archambault said the zoo was thrilled with the way the first day went.
“For the rest of my life I will never forget a young kid running up to me when I was wearing my zoo hat and zoo shirt and yelling ‘Best. Day. Ever’, “ Archambault said. “We are honouring all of Alberta’s health directives, with high levels of sanitation, with tonnes of signage, with all the physical distancing in place, but people still felt like it was their zoo and they had a meaningful experience.
“We’ve certainly seen some tweaks we like to make, just in flow patterns through the zoo to help make it more clear for our guests, but we have full reservations for several days.
“It was a special day.”
On Twitter: @DannyAustin_9
EDITOR’S NOTE: In an earlier version of this article, a quote attributed to zoo spokeswoman Alison Archambault incorrectly contained a curse word caused by a typographical error. This has since been corrected but due to a technological glitch, the misspelled word may have persisted in versions shared on certain social media platforms.
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