Submitted by Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium
Santa will dive with the sharks at Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium Tuesday and Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. during Zoolights. Since he has, well, some other pressing business this week, they will be his last two appearances of the season in the zoo’s South Pacific Aquarium.
He’ll be accompanied on his dives by an elf, and he will talk to the little girls and boys (big ones, too!) assembled to see him.
And Santa’s not the only star of the Zoolights show. The much-loved holiday lights display features more than 600,000 energy-efficient, colorful LED lights. They cover the zoo grounds in displays celebrating the zoo’s conservation mission, depicting animals in scenes that are whimsical in some cases and showcase the beauty of nature in others.
Don’t-miss displays include an 8 ½-foot-tall-by-22-foot-wide orange-and-white rock crab, complete with moving pincers; a 100-foot-wide Giant Pacific octopus atop the North Pacific Aquarium; a 14-foot-high-by-30-foot-wide 3-dimensional sea life scene featuring a seahorse, jellyfish, stingrays and corals. All done in 10,296 lights.
Plus ice-skating puffins, swooping eagles, a sea lion diving for fish in the sea, a grinning Cheshire cat, orcas swimming under the twin Narrows Bridges and much more.
Tickets to Zoolights are just $8.50 per person online at www.pdza.org/zoolights or at Puget Sound-area Fred Meyer stores. They are $10 at the gate.
Children ages 2 and younger are admitted at no charge. Parking is free.
Visitors can avoid the lines by purchasing tickets in advance and just scanning them at the turnstiles when they reach zoo grounds.
After all, Santa is waiting — and he’ll be gone with a finger upside his nose and a twinkle in his eye before he dives out of sight for 2015.
