Stampede ready to roar to full strength with Sneak-a-peek night
The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth is ready to roar again.
As the gates to the Calgary Stampede Sneak-a-peek opened Thursday night, so did the skies with a half-hour thunderstorm that symbolically washed away the past two years of pandemic-related frustration.
For Jen Rinas and her daughter, Ashlyn, 9, it was a must-see night. They come every year, but were scheduled to head to B.C. for two weeks on Friday. This made Thursday their opportunity to be part of a return to the normal of the previous 110 years.
“Last year it felt different because places were so quiet, so I'm expecting this year will be like normal,” Jen said while waiting out the rain, hail, thunder and lightning inside the Nutrien Western Event Centre. “We've never been to Sneak-a-peek before but she absolutely wanted to come. She was disappointed we were going to miss the Stampede. So I said we'll go even if it's gonna rain.”
The Stampede is returning to a full-fledged event this year, including a few new attractions, none bigger than the Super Wheel — a 150-foot-tall ferris wheel that dominates the midway skyline.
Jeff Mikolajow and his son, Lincoln, and daughter, Pressley, were instantly drawn to the towering ride and were queued up to be first.
Jeff has been coming to the Stampede since he was a kid growing up in Calgary and couldn't wait to be part of this year.
“I'm super stoked for what it means for Calgary, honestly, just to see people down here,” he said. “It's a slow start this year, but it's always a good time.”
The midway food is an attraction all on its own and this year there are more than 30 new Stampede-specific creations from vendors, including Crazy Tongue pizza from Avatara Pizza, complete with slow-braised AAA Alberta cow tongue; honey habanero ice pops from the Cookie Dough Stand; and octopus rangoon from Happy Fish.
Kyle Russell, director of Stampede programming, said he was looking forward to the meal worm hot dog from Superbooth and the cricket hot dog from The Wurst & Burger Shack. He said they challenge the vendors to come up with new concoctions each year and they answered the call again.
“When you think of a meal worm hot dog and a cricket hot dog, it might not be something that you're dining on every day, but I certainly want to try it and have the experience, and I think a lot of our guests want that as well,” he said.
Russell said there are options available to people rain or shine, but urged visitors to be prepared for the weather, including next week's forecast of clear skies and temperatures closer to 30 C.
This will be the first full Stampede with Joel Cowley as CEO. He was at last year's scaled back Stampede and has attended numerous times in the past, but this will be his first time to see the inner workings of the big show.
“As a guest, I have certainly seen the fantastic presentation, the diversity of attractions, but for going behind the scenes to understand what our volunteers do and what our staff do, that's really what I'm looking most forward to,” he said.
Cowley said they predicted in November that one million people would come through the gates this year — that was before Omicron and subsequent waves of COVID-19 through the first three months of 2022. Pre-pandemic, the Stampede attracted between 1.2 million and 1.4 million guests a year and has an economic effect of about $540 million annually in Calgary.
The pandemic saddled the Stampede with multimillion-dollar losses over the past two years — $28 million in 2020 and $8.3 million last year.
“It's obviously important for the recovery of this organization after two really tough financial years, but I think it's also important for recovery in Calgary coming out of a pandemic and the recovery of the hospitality sector,” said Cowley.