It was a beautiful, sunny day on Saturday, the perfect day for getting out of the house to enjoy what summer in Drumheller has to offer, especially considering what was happening downtown.
On August 18, downtown Drumheller hosted the first ever Family Fun Day.
“I was hoping we could hit about 1,000 people. I think we went over that during the course of the day. It exceeded expectations in terms of attendance,” said event organizer John Shoff.
The event featured bouncy castles, mini-golf, dunk tank, and the main event which consisted of some daredevil motocross.
“It’s just awesome to watch the bikes especially, then you see the kids in the bouncy castle, and the face painter was a hit. Everybody seemed to be having a good time,” said Shoff.
“I never thought I’d see something like this in downtown. I’ve lived here all my life and never seen anything like this,” said Kyle Suntjens, who was at the event with his family.
Aside from the positive feedback from residents who attended, many downtown businesses also saw the event as a boon.
“I think the downtown group, in terms of the businesses affected, had approached me after and said this was one of the first events where they saw a huge difference in terms of people coming in and sales. That was nice feedback from a different angle. It’s nice to see the businesses that are putting money into the event are seeing something. For example, Pizza 249 had people lined up outside the door,” said Shoff.
The event raised $1,400 for the DinoArts Committee from a barbecue on site. The dunk tank, which dunked members of Town Council, raised $591 for the Badlands Community Facility.
There are no definite plans as of yet to have another Family Fun Day, though Shoff is hoping this year’s event was the first of many.
“I’d really like to. It depends on how our committee as a whole decides to go. I think we’ll look at doing something similar in the future. We might mix up some stuff, but the bikes are something so different. If we bring the bikes back, they could line up more riders,” said Shoff.
“I think there was a lot of surprise from everybody as to how this worked out. Everything went well. I couldn’t ask for anything better, especially for the first year.”
