Kiwanis Club takes Zozobra event upscale
Sponsors say VIP viewing areas will subsidize $10 general admission tickets and free entry for kids
The annual torching of Old Man Gloom started decades ago as a small affair in the backyard of an artist who wanted to help liven up Santa Fe’s autumn Fiesta. Nowadays, revelers can get dinner and drinks, skip long lines and watch an elaborate, fireworks-filled show from a couch above a crowd packed into Fort Marcy Ballpark for what has become the city’s most popular spectacle. For the right price, that is. The Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe, which inherited the tradition of burning of Will Shuster’s Zozobra, is expanding its recent move toward offering premium seating and other privileges — at a higher cost.
VIP viewing areas, equivalent in concept to sky boxes at stadiums, arenas and other entertainment venues, are designed to allow the club to generate more revenue while continuing to offer $10 general admission tickets and free admission for children 10 and under, event coordinator Ray Sandoval said Monday.
“We don’t want it to be the haves and have nots,” he said, “but at the same time, we don’t want to raise the ticket price and have fewer people. This is really an opportunity for us to keep this an affordable event for Santa Fe.”
Kiwanis, which stages the production as a fundraiser for the nonprofit community service organization, is also offering $35 fan club memberships, which give members access to a fans-only website and an opportunity to buy tickets to the ritual torching and merchandise a day before everyone else.
Sandoval said the fan club isn’t expected to generate too much money, but the Kiwanis Club thought it would be a
good marketing tool.
Ticket prices to one of the four premium viewing areas this September will range from $35 to $60.
All of the tickets to the VIP areas come with an “express check-in” that will allow ticket holders to get into Fort Marcy faster than people who buy $10 tickets, though $10 ticket holders can spend an extra $10 for express check-in, too.
For what organizers call the Ultimate Zozobra Experience, which includes an escort through roadblocks and the chance to roast marshmallows over Zozobra’s charred remains, tickets are $200 each.
A $35 fee will get you into an area called “East of the Beast,” which is about 135 feet east of where the giant marionette is suspended from a utility pole, taunted and burned. Sandoval said 500 of these tickets will be offered.
“You’ll feel the heat. You’ll smell the smoke. You’ll be under a canopy of fireworks,” says a Kiwanis news release.
The club plans to sell 200 tickets at $50 a piece for access to an area called “West of the Wild One.”
“They’ll have a beautiful view of Zozobra just off to the west,” Sandoval said.
Tickets priced at $60 apiece will give access to an area called “Front and Center,” which is 90 feet from Zozobra and in front of the crowd of thousands of other revelers.
“You will find yourself in the middle of the battle between ‘Burn him!’ and Zozo’s growling. It’s intense,” the news release states.
Sandoval said 200 spots are available in that location.
Those willing and able to shell out $150 each will be ushered into a premium viewing area called the “Z Club.”
“Only 60 people will pass the velvet ropes of Z Club,” the announcement says. “Z Club will be the place to see and be seen.”
Z Club will be located above the music stage, just west of the area called “West of the Wild One.”
“You actually walk upstairs, and you’ll be literally on top of the entertainment stage,” Sandoval said. “It’ll have couches and little bar stools. It just looks cool. If I weren’t lighting Zozobra on fire, that’s where I would want to be.”
Sandoval said the Kiwanis Club is setting aside a limited number of tickets in each of the premium viewing areas which it will probably give to nonprofits that serve low-income families to hand out.
Sandoval said there are only 20 tickets for the “Ultimate Zozobra Experience,” which the club started providing for its top sponsors in 2014.
There was no admission charge until the Downtown Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe took over the event in 1962. The $1 admission charge remained the same for 28 years until 1990 when it was raised to $2, then $3 in 1994, $5 in 1997, then $10 in 2010.
A move to a $20 admission price in 2012 generated controversy and attendance sagged that year, to about 13,000. The price was later reduced and the event was moved back to the Friday night of Labor Day weekend, a week before the official start of the Fiesta de Santa Fe.
The club started to offer premium seating tickets to the public for the first time last year.
“We sold 500 tickets there for $25 a piece, and those 500 spots went in 11 days,” Sandoval said. “We knew that there was definitely a want out there, a market for these premium tickets.”
Sandoval said the club has tried to keep production costs down. “But the one thing we can’t really hold down is costs for logistics, [such as] roadblocks, fencing, security,” he said. “Public safety is of paramount concern for us, so those costs continue to rise exponentially.”
The club has had limited success with sponsorships from businesses, he said.
“With the hard times that local businesses are going through, it’s hard for them to donate,” he said. “We’re not the only nonprofit that’s kind of felt that. I know the Fiesta Council has had a hard time raising some funds.”
Sandoval said the club didn’t want to raise general admission ticket prices.
“This is all about our commitment to keeping Zozobra at a $10 ticket with kids 10 and under free. That’s the starting point,” he said. “We really feel that we are one of the last Santa Fe traditions that is affordable for our Santa Fe families. … The question was, how do we generate more revenue? Rather than forcing a higher ticket price on everybody, what we decided to do is create [the fan club and the premium viewing areas], which we hope are going to generate more revenue.”