Spooky hay mazes, a packed pumpkin patch and a lake full of lanterns await guests of Aggieland Safari this October. With the help of the hundreds of different species that call the zoo and adventure park home, fall just got a little bit wilder.
Every Saturday and Sunday this October, Aggieland Safari is hosting their Zootober event with vendors, live music, a family-friendly haunted woods and more. The park will also host a Floating Lantern Festival on Oct. 5 from 4:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
With Zootober and the Floating Lantern Festival, the Aggieland Safari is looking to create fun, family memories that also hold a much bigger purpose.
“Some of the importance of the events is to not only create a space where people can come and have fun doing something that they can’t do at any other fall festival, but also facilitate us bringing a message about how important zoos are to conservation,” education coordinator Macaulay White said. “Animals that we have here in the zoo serve as ambassadors for their species and promote the importance of conservation and what each individual person can do for the wild animals.”
White said the park’s wildlife will play a major role in pulling off all the fall fun the staff has planned. In addition to games and face painting, there will be a pumpkin patch set up next to Aggieland Safari’s giraffes.
“It creates this really cool experience for everyone’s photos,” White said. “I’ve never really seen that at any other fall festival.”
While the Floating Lantern Festival will bring light-hearted activities and vendors such as beer and wine breweries, Special Event Coordinator Josie Blevins said the lake at the safari will serve as a place of mourning. Families can utilize the lanterns to write their meaningful connections and memories of their loved ones that have passed on and release them out onto the lake.
“The Lantern Festival is special because it gives people a chance to give remembrance to their loved ones and is just a way of showing them that we still love them and care for them, while releasing some of that emotion,” Blevins said.
Overall, the staff’s main mission is to create a unique space so that families can come together and experience something they never have before.
“We want to create events that we would want to bring our families to,” Blevins said. “Holding events like these are very important so that we can keep our current customers entertained with new activities and also provide one big, fun family event. We want to provide the family events that the Bryan-College Station area doesn’t have.”