Wild Animal Park Concerts Free Again

The San Diego Wild Animal Park, which caught flak last year for charging $2 extra for its popular summer concerts, will return to free concerts this year.

Before last year, the concerts had been included in the cost of admission to the park. Regular admission to the park now is $6.95 for adults and $3.95 for children.

Officials say that they hope the free concerts will lure back to the famous animal preserve those people who haven’t visited the park for several years and are not familiar with its “new and improved” attractions, including some that will be unveiled this summer.

Attendance at the Wild Animal Park was down about 15% last year. Park officials, however, suggest that the unusually hot and muggy summer of 1984 should take much of the blame for keeping visitors away from the attraction. The sprawling park is situated in the San Pasqual Valley east of Escondido where, even on the best of summer days, the heat can turn away visitors and send animals into ponds for relief.

Tom Hanscom, a spokesman for the Wild Animal Park, said this week that the concert admission charge was dropped for two reasons.

“One thing we looked at was the operating cost in printing and selling the tickets compared to the income the concerts generated,” he said. While $286,000 in concert tickets were sold, the park had the expense of operating a ticket trailer throughout the summer months as well as hiring ticket takers and security people for the concerts.

“But we also looked at why we began offering the free concerts in the first place--as a way to coax people through the front gates and to discover the park, so they’d come back and spend more time on another visit. That’s the intent of the concerts, to bring first-time visitors to the park,” Hanscom said.

The concerts, held in a natural amphitheater where the audience sits on the grass, were introduced in 1981 and typically featured bluegrass and country music acts.