While the heat is only just beginning to signal the season, the Royal Tyrrell Museum is anticipating a strong season.
There are a number of factors that could play in to this. This year the Calgary Stampede is celebrating its Centennial and Travel Alberta just completed a marketing journey in to the United States featuring the Tyrrell.
“We are already up,” said Marketing Coordinator for the Tyrrell Museum Leanna Mohan. “Our website is up and last month we had more Americans to our website than Canadians.”
She said their tour operator visitorship is up 180 per cent in the last three years, and their overall visitorship has been up in the first four months of 2012. The Family Day weekend smashed records.
Some of the interest shown by American visitors to the website could be due to the trip that Francois Therrien made to California with an Albertosauruss. This sojourn, sponsored by Travel Alberta even landed them with a spot on American national television on Jimmie Kimmel Live.
The Calgary Stampede will certainly be a factor, which could contribute to a strong year. Mohan said the Stampede is always a busy time for the museum, and this year they will also have a float in the parade.
“We do it every second year and this is going to be big, this year we had to work hard to enter because there were a third more applications,” she said.
She explains the float will reflect the featured exhibit the Royal Tyrrell Museum’s new exhibit, Alberta’s Last Sea Dragon – Solving an Ancient Puzzle, and will feature a new species of elasmosaur. A 23-foot neck, with 76 vertebrae, characterizes the beast. The base of the body will be on a motorized chassis, while walkers will carry the neck on sticks. Don Henderson, who wrote the paper describing the specimen, will be on the parade route.
Locally there are a number of factors including DinoFest and the Tyrrell’s new exhibit, which opened May Long Weekend, that could boost numbers.
A more concrete reason to expect more visitors might just be pavement. After a number of years of construction Highway 9 from Drumheller, west to Beiseker has been completely resurfaced.
“The construction has been a factor for a couple of years, and now it is done,” said Mohan.
