Animal magic! Huge rise in Dudley Zoo visitors
More than 2,200 people filed into Dudley Zoo in the week between Christmas and New Year - almost 800 more than the same week in the previous year, it has been revealed.
Attendance was at its highest on Monday, December 28, which was a bank holiday, and Tuesday, December 29, when more than 1,000 crammed into the Castle Hill attraction.
Zoo director Derek Grove said: "We've seen a year-on-year increase of December school holiday visitors and we're delighted with these latest figures and glad so many people enjoyed the chance to explore the zoo."
The zoo's Winter Wonderland Santa's grotto also proved to be extremely popular, with visitor numbers up by more than 2,000 on last year. A total of 12,591 paid Santa a visit inside the famous castle that stands within the grounds. Santa had to work overtime, such was the extent of the crowd that came to see him.
Mr Grove said: "Our grotto was so popular that we even had to extend the opening hours so more families could see Santa."
The visitor numbers over Christmas rounded off an impressive year for the zoo, which saw more than a quarter of a million people come through the gates.
New arrivals, including Asiatic lion, Jetpur, sealions Oba, Deisy, Marina, and Tania, helped boost numbers. The Castle Creatures attraction, which features 71 fast-flying Egyptian fruit and Seba's short-tailed bats, was also new during 2015.
It is more encouraging news for Black Country tourism and comes after the Black Country Living Museum an eight per cent rise in visitor numbers over the last 12 months.
A total of 292,530 visitors passed through the museum doors in 2015, a staggering rise of more than 50,000 in the past two years. The surge in interest has brought an extra half a million pounds into the attraction.
The zoo will be allowing customers to get even closer to the animals next year, with the launch of the Close Encounter incentive which will allow people to walk up to the zoo's five sea lions with a bucket of fish and feed the 40-stone creatures their favourite food.
Last March, 18-year-old female sealion Deisy – the first foreign animal to be transferred to the zoo via the Channel Tunnel – arrived from the south of France.
Just a few days later, 14-year-old male Oba joined from the French Riviera. Then in October, two more females Marina, aged 19, and 18-year-old Tania came in from Toulouse.
