Weather lowers attendance for Lights Before Christmas - FOX Carolina 21

Snow last weekend and rain this weekend will no doubt keep some people away from the Toledo Zoo's Lights Before Christmas.

The display runs through the end of December, but their most popular days – the weekends – have been less than encouraging for visitors.

"[There are] lots of reasons to have people here, but weather has not been our friend so far this year," said Mary Fedderke, director of institutional advancement for the zoo.

On their opening weekend this year, snow closed the displays that Sunday. Last weekend, another snow storm closed the zoo Saturday. They've had about 76,000 visitors so far, but they hoped to be at 100,000 by now.

With new additions this year, including an ice skating rink, zoo officials are a little disappointed the weather is not cooperating. And with heavy rain in the forecast, lower attendance is expected again this weekend, just days before Christmas.

Despite the bad weather, Fedderke says they will not extend the lights display beyond Dec. 31.

"We have done it in the past," she said. "Even with some of this weather slowing us…we will not extend the lights this year because we need to jump right into a great big year of 2014, ‘Year of Flight.'"

Fedderke says if you want to see the lights, plan to get to the zoo before the year ends.

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