DRIPPING SPRINGS — Families can start making plans to attend the second annual Western Wonderland at Dripping Springs Ranch Park for the holiday season. Following DSRP Manager Emily Nelson’s presentation on Tuesday, May 7, Dripping Springs City Council unanimously approved bringing back the Western Wonderland event for a second year. Last year’s event brought a total of $153,058.48 in revenue, with $110,258.48 coming from fees and $42,800 from sponsorships and Hotel Occupancy Tax funds, according to Nelson’s presentation. The expenditures, which totaled to $297,594.47, compared to the $252,425 that was budgeted, were as follows: • Personnel Costs: $13,962.58 actual; $25,000 budgeted • Advertisements/Marketing: $8,150 actual; $8,800 budgeted • Event Costs (Contract, electricity, HCLE, supplies, merchandise/concessions and signage/graphics): $219,392.72 actual; $232,192 budgeted • Other (Sponsorship costs, banners and appreciation; lodging and fuel): $56,089.17 actual; $20,500 budgeted Nelson explained that after a smooth first year of Western Wonderland, several lessons were learned to create even more positive changes and growth for years to come. • Increase the dates to include the week of Thanksgiving. • Turn over marketing to the city of Dripping Springs marketing team • Expand special events • Create more time slots for community performances during non-peak times • Expand ice skating lessons • Really analyze the traffic patterns to set the hours • Increase party/table rental opportunities • Add skate assists for our small and/or less experienced skaters for a rental fee • Increase merchandise • Offer special discount cards before the rink opens for holiday gifts • Sell frequent skater punch cards throughout the season “We are definitely still in the planning phases. We are actually going to grow upon the ice skating lessons and our special events that we already had started with last year. We're just going to enhance those and bring up more special opportunities where people can come in and have smaller amounts of people on the ice because they're there during a special event time,” Nelson said. “We'll continue growing those programs, they were very popular last year. And then we are excited that we're getting the skate assists, so that any of the new skaters will be able to have a little bit more of a balancing opportunity, they'll build to use those skate assists.” The estimated total cost for the rink is $187,679, with an option to add an ice technician for $41,490 if DSRP decided it needed one. Last year, the total cost — with an ice tech already included — was $203,442. “Currently, we're not going to step forward with an ice tech. Our staff trained last year, which is what we were hoping that they would do, since they handle everything in our arena. So, we're hoping that that would translate a little bit over into our ice rink,” Nelson said. While she was unable to provide the total number of people who attended the 2023 Western Wonderland event, as there were some who came in organically from the trail of lights and community performances, Nelson said that there were a little more than 8,000 skaters. “The positive feedback in-person and [on] social media, it was amazing. The few customer issues I had to navigate with people, it was all reasonable,” Nelson explained. “I never had such an experience where I didn’t have somebody with a lot of negative feedback to give us. Everything out there on social media and just in-person were people asking if there was any way we could have a rink the entire year.” “It was a fun experience for it to be such a happy moment and just seeing [on] social media and seeing the community enjoy it, that definitely warmed our hearts,” she continued. The estimated dates for the event are Nov. 22, 2024, through Jan. 5, 2025. However, the event is still in the planning phases and the dates are subject to change.
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