TRANSCRIPT 🔗
00:00:00
Speaker 1: One of the fun things that goes on in Denver every year is Zoo Lights. And joining us to talk about Zoo Lights, which is going to start pretty soon at the Denver Zoo, is the man himself, Jake Cuvier, director of public relations and other stuff at the Denver Zoo. Jake, good to talk to you again. Thanks for being here. Good morning, Ross.
00:00:21
Speaker 2: Always good to be with you.
00:00:22
Speaker 1: All right. Tell us about Zoo Lights for people who don't know about it already.
00:00:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is our 35th year, great holiday family tradition, and happens to coincide with our 130th anniversary, so kind of a historic year. But yeah, it starts November 23rd and goes through January 3rd. I love the zoo lights.
00:00:42
Speaker 3: I think I've gone for the past several years, and it's always a great experience, and it's just really fun to get into the holiday spirit. But I'm not going to lie, Jake, I always am also, when I'm out and about at the zoo at night going, Well, I hope I'm not bothering the animals in the area. So I'm curious what you guys have to do in order to make sure that, like, it's not really disturbing their sleep cycle when we're going out and enjoying the zoo lights.
00:01:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's a really good question and one that we get a lot. And animal care is always our top priority. So zoo lights is definitely designed very intentionally around the animal's needs. So, you know, in a lot of places where animals are more sensitive, you'll see maybe less noise, less flashing lights. You know, we have to make sure that things are out of reach of certain animals. An elephant's trunk, for example, can stretch up to 10 feet. So we need to make sure that we're accommodating for that. So there's a lot that goes into planning for zoo lights, obviously for the guest experience, but also to make sure that our 3,000 animals are comfortable and happy as well.
00:01:39
Speaker 1: All right, let me ask you a follow-up on Gina's question, except my version will be stupider.
00:01:44
Speaker 3: Are there.
00:01:49
Speaker 1: Nocturnal animals that you think really dig it when you do zoo lights.
00:01:55
Speaker 2: You know, most of the nocturnal animals we have live in indoor habitats. A lot of them are smaller species that live in places like Tropical Discovery or our primate habitats, Emerald Forest. But I will say that a lot of the animals seem to be really curious about the setup. The giraffes are really curious as our crews are out there setting up lights and the sculptures and everything. So definitely curiosity in the setup, but not many of them actually see what's happening during the evening itself.
00:02:23
Speaker 3: Talk a little bit more about the setup and the process for it. I am curious if you have a count of how many lights are we talking about. And it's not just string lights. I mean, there's so many different animals and scenes that you guys put together with the zoo lights.
00:02:36
Speaker 2: I'm glad you asked. I just got done with my daily count. We're at 4,122,000 lights. I'm just kidding. I don't know the exact. You had me fooled. We have about 4 million lights strung up all over our 80-acre campus, and I really love to share how much work goes into this. This is actually about an eight-month process between setup that starts in July or August, and then once it's over, we have to tear it all down, and that takes another two, three months. So there's work happening for Zoo Lights throughout the year, and our team is doing an incredible job of trying to create new experiences for Every year, one really neat thing that we're doing, which will be really nostalgic for a lot of Denver families since it is the 35th anniversary and our 130th anniversary for the zoo, is a lot of the old sculptures from the early days of Zoo Lights, we're dusting them off and bringing them back out. So there's going to be some great photo ops for families who have been coming for years and might remember Klondike and Snow, for example. There's a sculpture dedicated to them, a couple other sculptures that go back 20, 30 years. Amazing.
00:03:46
Speaker 1: And folks, you can go to DenverZoo.org, DenverZoo.org, and just scroll down a little bit. On the left side, you'll see the Zoo Lights thingy. You can click on that to buy your tickets. We're just about out of time, Jake, but just one quick thing. When you talked about the number of months to put them up and then a couple of months to take them down, producer dragon had a look of shock and surprise on his face and i i i'm not sure but i am wondering if producer dragon had the same thought that i had which was why don't you leave some of.
00:04:15
Speaker 2: Them up but just not turn them on well that is one of the secrets there are some trees where that are kind of more off the path a little bit where we will leave the lights on or just leave them up and not turn them on but for the most part probably 90 percent of everything gets taken down wow.
00:04:31
Speaker 1: What an immense amount of work that's incredible So like you said, it's almost literally year round. That's pretty neat. Pretty neat. Zoo Lights starts in 11 days on November 23rd. It goes into the first few days of January, and it is a wonderful, wonderful thing to do. There are also some value nights where tickets are a little bit less expensive. You want to go check that as well. DenverZoo.org is the website. DenverZoo.org. Scroll down a little bit to the Zoo Lights link. And thanks to Jake's generosity, after we do a little news weather and traffic here, I'll have a couple of family packs of Zoo Lights tickets to give away. So, Jake, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for telling us some stories. And thanks for the tickets for listeners.
00:05:20
Speaker 2: Of course. Good to talk to you.
00:05:21
Speaker 1: All right. You too. That's Jake Cougier from the Denver Zoo.