Low income folks get free trips to Houston Zoo (house, buy)

[da jammer]

Houston Zoo will let families on food stamps enter for free | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Judging by the comments at the end of the article this new strategy doesn't appear to be all that wildly popular. Since I have never been there I'm wondering what kind of impact this will have on the zoo and surrounding area, if any.

[Wysiwyg]

maybe its a trick, to get real meaty dinners to the carnivores. or maybe its a way to send messages about being behind bars

[tstone]

I wonder if this will increase my odds of being able to score an 8 ball at the zoo.

[occdn]

Originally Posted by Wysiwyg

... or maybe its a way to send messages about being behind bars

Hahaha

[chris_ut]

Damn poor people. I bet they don't work just so they can mooch free zoo passes. They are sneaky those poor people.

[da jammer]

c'mon folks let's try and stick close to the topic. We have family meeting at my son's house down there the 2nd or 3rd weekend of August and one of our plans was to hit up the zoo but not if it is gonna be jammed to the gills with people especially a bunch of peeps wanting to duke it out in line I guess we'll just keep an eye on the situation and see how it plays out.

[tstone]

Hey, I was being somewhat serious with my comment. I think it's a pretty legitimate concern if I had some guests, esp with young uns.

[houstoner]

You can't take the chron.com comments too seriously. I don't see this having any negative impact really. On free days (holidays) the zoo is usually pretty packed with families of all sorts, not just the low-income. Minimizing the crowds on those days and alleviating (car and foot) traffic so that low-income folks can go anytime during the year rather than just on a handful of free days sounds like a win/win to me.

Go early in the morning before it gets too hot, or late in the evening.

[desertsun41]

The idea is just fine but they are going about it all wrong. Growing up on the east coast it was everyday common place for ALL Tuesdays to be free day in all the state parks. This included ones with lakes and swimming beaches.

Some 30 years ago when this began the parks became over crowded on free day but that leveled off quickly once everyone went once. The only problem is the type of person a free day attracted. Certianly there were many welfare lower income people looking to get out for a day with just gas money. That was not so bad as the messes they left behind for park employees were a large problem.

But Houston Zoo has done this on holidays. Why? The idea of free day should be to draw more people, which Houston Zoo also says. But you do it on slow days like Tue or Wed, not federal holidays. That is nuts.

You offer free days to get people in and with hopes that they buy lunch and gifts while there. Nothing wrong with a free day or a senior day.

[Beto]

Originally Posted by tstone

I wonder if this will increase my odds of being able to score an 8 ball at the zoo.

That's funny!