America’s Teaching Zoo opened its annual Spring Spectacular event on Saturday, March 25, beginning two weeks of shows, games, food, and fun. This year’s theme is video games.

In addition to it’s shows, the zoo has decorated itself with props and booths themed around memorable video game franchises such as Mario, Sonic, Donkey Kong, and Pokemon.

“I think the video game theme is nice,” said student zookeeper Victoria Fosdick. “Because parents who played those games back in the eighties when they originally came out…it’s a nice way for those parents to connect to their kids.”

This year, the event features three shows, one on the main stage, “Eye to Eye” in the outdoor amphitheater, and “Creature Feature” indoors. Each of the shows is intended for parents and children alike.

“There’s always going to be something going on,” said student zookeeper Saffron Williams. “If you just finished a show on the main stage and you’re still amped up ready to go, there’s probably going to be a show in eye or a demonstration in our ‘Creature Feature’ stage. It’s not like a typical day at the zoo.”

The main stage show this year revolves around two zookeepers pretending to play video games while animals and their trainers act out each game with props and costumes.

“We’ve actually been preparing for an entire semester,” said instructional lab technician Mara Rodriguez. “So we’ve been producing the show, we are preparing the zoo, we’re training the animals, we’re teaching the students all the different aspects of event planning and zoo event planning and that all takes a few months.”

Around November, the second year zookeeping students were tasked with planning and organizing the show’s script, backdrops, animal behaviors, sound design, and theme.

“You see all the little parts leading up to it, you see some of the animals struggling with the behaviors, or they were really good at the behaviors and stopped doing them for a while…Now seeing it in its final form is like seeing a baby,” said Fosdick.

Another main feature of the Spring Spectacular is located in the indoor amphitheater of the EATM building. The “Creature Feature” show is a showcase of outside organizations and their animals. According to Rodriguez, there are a lot of alumni zookeepers and animal movie stars that come in. On Sunday, March 26, the Nyander Guard animal shelter came to the amphitheater, a Japanese rescue shelter that helped save animals in the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster.

“We think it’s great,” said George Smith who was visiting the zoo with his wife for the second day in a row. “It really is awesome, all the work the students go through to put it on and get ready, it’s tremendous.”

Besides the shows, the Spring Spectacular also brings food vendors and games to the zoo. There’s a ring toss, a water balloon throw, and even a booth where kids can guess what types of animals certain video game characters are. The zoo itself has been completely decorated as well.

“I think the Spring Spectacular is a great event for new visitors, to show what is kind of the very best about america’s teaching zoo,” said Rodriguez. “And I think what makes it great for frequent visitors is that they’re going to get to see something different on the weekends of Spring Spectacular.”

“The shows were wonderful, they were great… we want to bring our grandchildren here next weekend,” said Jerry and Sandra Katz, visitors to the event.

The Spring Spectacular event will be featured at America’s Teaching Zoo in the EATM building for one more weekend on April 1 and 2 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.