Always on top of the Zoo Tunes news, our friends up at Phinneywood note that Zoo Tunes is offering to help parents enjoy a kid-free concert this summer:
Woodland Park Zoo is offering a new Parents’ Night Out childcare service at select ZooTunes concerts this summer. Childcare is provided for kids ages 4-11 inside Zoomazium. Supervised activities include games, puppet shows, and a live animal encounter, plus pizza.
Parents’ Night Out is offered at the first four ZooTunes concerts of the season: The B-52s (6/17 – sold out); Mavis Staples with special guest Allen Toussaint (6/24); and Three Girls and Their Buddy featuring Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin and Buddy Miller (7/1 and 7/2).
Drop-off is from 5-6:30 p.m. in the ARC building adjacent to the West Entrance at N. 55th St. and Phinney Ave. N. Pizza dinner is served at 5:40 p.m., and childcare continues through pick-up at the end of each concert. Cost is $25 per child, and $20 for each additional child in the same family.
Pre-registration is strongly encouraged, but drop-ins are welcome through 6:30 p.m. on the night of the event. Registration forms are online.
Heck, why not skip the concert, head home and enjoy some “alone time”?
That does seem like a cheap babysitter (at least for 1 or 2 kids) including the food and getting to touch a turtle or whatever.
I haven’t ever actually been to one of these things, but I thought they were intended to be some sort of family friendly thing. Though I guess surely taking a 7 year old to see Emmylou Harris et al. would be an exquisite sort of torture for everyone involved.
Rob, we usually get to at least one ZooTunes show every summer, and you’re right, they are uncommonly family-friendly. Loads of little ones are always there, enjoying a picnic with mom and dad and then running up and down the little hill off to the side of the meadow. The concerts are quite early too, so they don’t mess with bedtimes too much. I’m kind of surprised the zoo is offering childcare, but ZooTunes would be a fun kid-free date night too, so sure, why not?
We took our five-month-old last year, and she lay on the blanket and dug the Indigo Girls. This year, we expect she’ll boogie to Ladysmith Black Mambazo . . . and then run up and down that little hill.
Jenny