There were over 22,600 visitors who took in the 25th edition of Wildlights at the BC Wildlife Park in Kamloops last month.

That is according to General Manager, Glenn Grant, who says a five-day long cold snap last month that saw temperatures between -15 C and -30 C didn’t appear to deter some visitors to the annual festive light display.

“Sure, no one is going to walk around the park, well not 2,000 people walking around the park in those temperatures but we did get 70 to 80 people on those nights, so we’re pretty good,” Grant said.

Speaking on the NL Morning News, Grant says it was the best attendance they’ve had in over 17 years of Wildlights.

“Years ago, we didn’t do a 23 day long event. We were 33 days. We were 36 days. We were 30 days. We were all over the map but since we’ve been at 23 days, this is the [third] best,” Grant added. “We had 23,200 people in 2005 [and 24,726 people in 2004].”

“We didn’t operate in 2020 but 2019, 2021, and 2022 were all extremely, extremely well attended and this particular Wildlights was the best one in 17 years. If you looked at the average visitor per day, this probably was the second best Wildlights in our history.”

The 2022 edition of Wildlights brought in about $270,000 in revenue to the BC Wildlife Park, which will help support park operations through the leaner winter months.

“For the park to progress and for the park to continue to grow and stay a destination attraction, we need the revenue and we need events like this that are going to generate it to keep improving the park,” Grant said, noting Wildlights accounts for about 20 per cent of the park’s attendance and annual revenue.

“After the event is over, through January and February, even though we’re closed during the day, we still have to feed the animals, we still have to pay our staff, we still have to keep the lights on and the buildings heated,” he added.

“There are a number of operational expenses to carry through for a couple of months until spring break when things really start to pick up again.”