VALDOSTA, GA (WALB) -
Summer hours are over for Wild Adventures Theme Park in Valdosta but the park stayed open today to welcome all guests celebrating Labor Day. And one extra bonus, if you bought one ticket you received one free by donating a canned food.
Thousands of people took advantage of Wild Adventures' buy one get one ticket free this holiday weekend by giving the simple donation of a canned food item to Second Harvest Food Bank of South Georgia.
"The free ticket is very rewarding, because the money I save I can apply it somewhere else," said park guest, Thomas Strickland.
This is the third year Second Harvest has set up a Labor Day food drive at Wild Adventures, and they say it's one of their biggest drives of the year.
"Labor Day weekend is such a good weekend to do this because Splash Island closes today, it's the last day they're open for the season, and it's also a three day weekend so you can come out and buy one get one free and come for three days instead of just two," said Trent Matthews, Valdosta Second Harvest Manager.
Thousands of cans of food have been loaded into the second harvest food truck, right now the food bank expects to receive over 6,000 cans of food, 1,000 more then last year's Labor Day drive.
Wild Adventures says their partnership with Second Harvest is very important for the park to stay involved with the local community.
"We were looking for a way to deepen our ties with the local community and help out a great cause at the same time, we save our guests some money and Second Harvest gets their shelves restocked," said Dave Johnson with Wild Adventures.
Guests say the free ticket gave them a holiday vacation they may not otherwise been able to afford.
"It's my son's birthday today, so if he's happy I'm happy," said one guest.
"Time off from work, I enjoy the holidays and I try to make use of them," said Strickland.
Second Harvest says they were amazed to see how many people donated cans that already had season passes.
Second Harvest says through the Labor Day food drive they will be able to feed 3,000 people.
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