Saginaw Zoo Boo Offers Three More Family Weekends Before Halloween
The Saginaw Children’s Zoo will continue its family-focused Halloween celebration through Oct. 25 with candy, costumes, unlimited train and carousel rides and activities designed to be fun without being frightening.
SAGINAW, Mich. — Families looking for a Halloween outing without haunted houses or jump scares have three more weekends to visit the Saginaw Zoo Boo at the Children’s Zoo.
The annual event runs Oct. 10-11, Oct. 17-18, and Oct. 24-25, with the zoo open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Zoo Boo began Oct. 3 and runs through Oct. 25 on weekends.
Admission is $13 per person, while Saginaw Children’s Zoo members receive free admission. Costumes are encouraged for children and adults.
The zoo describes Zoo Boo as a “merry, not scary” Halloween event, with decorations and activities geared toward families with younger children rather than frightening displays.
Zoo Boo Admission Includes Rides and Candy
The $13 admission includes candy and prizes throughout the zoo, interactive activities, Dr. Slime shows and unlimited rides on both the miniature train and hand-carved carousel.
That package is different from a regular zoo visit. Standard admission is normally $9 for adults and children ages 1 to 17. Unlimited ride passes typically cost another $6 per person.
Parking is free in the zoo’s upper and lower lots and along designated portions of lower Hoyt Park Drive. The zoo remains open rain or shine, although train and carousel operations can be temporarily suspended during rain, lightning or other unsafe weather.
The Saginaw Children’s Zoo is located at 1730 S. Washington Ave.
Two Saginaw Traditions Are Part of the Ticket
The rides included with Zoo Boo also have ties to Saginaw history.
The zoo’s miniature train, known as the Iberschoff Special, has carried visitors around the grounds for more than 50 years. Saginaw schoolteacher Dr. Carl H. Iberschoff left the train in 1967, along with money, for improvements to parks and playgrounds.
Its locomotive was designed to resemble trains from the 1870s.
The zoo’s carousel came decades later, built largely through local volunteer work. Members of the Tri-City Wood Carvers hand-carved its animals, while volunteers spent about 40,000 hours over 18 months sanding, painting and completing the attraction.
The carousel also contains scenes from Saginaw-area history. Its decorative panels depict lumber camps, the 1893 fire, the 1904 flood, the Caledonia Coal Mine, migrant farmworkers, Fort Saginaw, and boating on Saginaw Bay.
A Nearly Century-Old Saginaw Attraction
Zoo Boo also gives visitors access to the animals and grounds of one of Saginaw’s longstanding family attractions.
The zoo dates to 1929, when city parks commissioner George Phoenix established it near Ezra Rust Park. By the following spring, its animals included a beaver, coyote, fox, bears, raccoons, timber wolves, owls, hawks and a deer.
Today, the 10-acre zoo houses more than 150 animals representing more than 50 species, along with gardens, a miniature railroad, and a carousel. The Saginaw Zoological Society has managed the facility since 1996.
In October, however, the focus shifts to pumpkins, costumes, and candy.
With three weekends remaining, Zoo Boo offers families from Saginaw, Bay City and the Thumb a daytime alternative to nighttime Halloween attractions — and one where a carousel ride, a train whistle and zoo animals are part of the celebration.
Zoo Boo runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 10-11, Oct. 17-18 and Oct. 24-25 at the Saginaw Children’s Zoo, 1730 S. Washington Ave. Admission is $13, and zoo members get free admission.
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