Zoo Forced to Apologize After Accidentally Advertising a ‘Child Predator Tour’
· Vice
There are some things in life so obviously inappropriate, so poorly worded, that the moment a specific set of words are crammed together to promote something as innocent as a zoo event for children, they should instantly trigger Star Wars-like klaxon alarms in the brains of everyone within a 50-mile radius. And yet a zoo in England eventually issued an apology after people rightfully criticized them for promoting a “child predator tour,” which isn’t what it sounds like, but it sure sounds exactly like what you think it sounds like.
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Chester Zoo has been around since 1931. According to the Manchester Evening News, the zoo made an enormous unforced error by offering a ticketing option advertising a 90-minute morning bus excursion called a “child predator tour.”
To be clear, the zoo wasn’t planning to do whatever you instantly imagine a child predator tour to be. If you’re anything like me, those three words in a very specific configuration immediately let my brain know that I shouldn’t imagine any further, lest I be put on some kind of list. In reality, the tour was a wholesome electric bus ride that gave kids a curated tour of apex carnivores like Sumatran tigers and Komodo dragons, all before the zoo officially opened, giving them a sense that the entire zoo was theirs.
Zoo Apologizes After Computer Error Creates a Very Unfortunate Tour Name
That’s what the event actually was. The problem is that it sounded like the kids were going to walk away from it with some real deep psychological scars. Zoo officials say that the horrific phrasing incident can be blamed on a computer error, as the automated ticketing platform smashed together the ticket tier (“child”) and the event category (“predator tour”) into one deeply unfortunate event name.
Why no one tried to stop it from there is another matter altogether.
After several people online pointed out the error to zoo officials, they renamed it the much less nefarious “Child Tour.”
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