GILROY
– Gilroy’s struggling theme park drew one of the largest crowds
in its young history Sunday when an estimated 8,000 people showed
up for the first-ever Bonfante Gardens holiday celebration.
GILROY – Gilroy’s struggling theme park drew one of the largest crowds in its young history Sunday when an estimated 8,000 people showed up for the first-ever Bonfante Gardens holiday celebration.
Families from Gilroy and as far away as San Jose and Modesto walked the holiday-lit park Sunday night, which had some of its regular attractions closed off. Much of the crowd congregated in a large white tent at the center of the park where children could pose for photos with Santa, make Christmas ornaments and munch on cheeseburgers, in between taking horse-drawn carriage rides accompanied by the sound of carolers ringing through the 600-acre park.
The attendance figure was 5,000 people greater than organizers had anticipated for the four-hour event and roughly double the amount of people the financially strapped park hosts during a typical season day.
“This shows how much people really love the park,” said Bob Kraemer, chairman of the Bonfante Gardens’ board of directors.
Organizers believe thousands of season passes were sold during the event, giving them ample reason to have a refreshed sense of potential for the horticulturally-themed amusement park. A more precise estimate of season passes sold was not available before deadline.
Organizers intended to let people fill out season pass applications and make purchases Sunday night. However, workers asked people to just provide their name and phone number because lines at the park’s Sugar Plum restaurant, where passes were being sold, grew so long.
“In my mind, if each of the people in attendance could, over the course of a year, bring in 100 paid people (directly and by word of mouth), this park will be a tremendous success,” Kraemer added.
Kraemer said that when an amphitheater crowd was asked whether Sunday was their first time to the park about half the people raised their hands.
“That obviously is a big plus. People had to see this side of the park,” Kraemer said.
The celebration, which kicked off with a parade of Bonfante Gardens characters, live animals and Santa, was free to the public. Those in attendance had to pay a $2 fee for parking, which spilled into Bonfante’s overflow lots due to the number of people in attendance.
“I don’t remember that happening since an appreciation day that was held at the park before it opened,” Kraemer said.
Due to the event’s success, the Christmas celebration, which trailed the annual downtown Christmas Tree Lighting event by one day, may not be the last holiday event at Bonfante Gardens.
“This gives me a taste of what could be. It gives me a taste of how wonderful the park will be once we are able to operate it how it can be operated,” board member Patti Hale said.
Bonfante Gardens does not have any future holiday events planned, but Hale said park officials have been mulling over similar festivity ideas for Halloween and Easter.
The Dec. 8 celebration was originally intended to be a multi-week affair running from Thanksgiving through New Year’s, but had to be trimmed down due to revenue shortfalls. Struggling to stay afloat since its inception in spring 2001, Bonfante Gardens announced an across the board layoff of 50 full-time employees in October.
Also in October, Hale approached the committee that runs the downtown Christmas celebration, hoping to move the tree-lighting ceremony to Bonfante Gardens. The committee however balked at the idea, saying a tree lighting event at Bonfante would pull people away from downtown businesses, which use the event to kick off Christmas shopping season.
“I don’t think either of the events took away from the other,” Hale said.
Hale said Bonfante used $7,000 of the $10,000 it had budgeted for the Christmas event. More than 140 volunteers helped plan and run the event.
One of those volunteers, docent Roger Anderson, was the epitome of someone with holiday spirit, Hale said. When Anderson saw that there were plenty of volunteers working in the section he had signed up for, he began cleaning up horse droppings from the carriages that rolled along.
“Talk about having your heart in the right place and showing holiday spirit,” Hale said.
As for the spirit Sunday night, Morgan Hill resident Sandy Moren summed it up: “My granddaughter, she’s 2 years old, so we had to bring her out. We think it’s a beautiful park, and we love it. We’re very proud to call Gilroy our home and this is a spectacular place. We tell people you can’t describe it, you have to see it.”
