Despite the much-anticipated arrival of pandas from China, the opening of Ripley’s Aquarium and a brutal winter saw the Toronto Zoo’s revenues drop $8.3 million from last year.

As of October this year, the zoo had nearly 300,000 fewer visitors, which resulted in decreased ticket sales, parking passes, food and retail sales.

The zoo took three major hits late last year: three star elephants finally departed for California in October following a bitter battle over their fate; Ripley’s opened its doors in a prime downtown location in October; and a brutal December kept visitors away from the outdoor park.

But using a reserve fund bolstered by a profitable 2013, the zoo says in can mitigate any remaining funding shortfalls.

“The Toronto Zoo has performed quite well considering the fact that the first new major attraction in over 20 years opened late 2013 and, due to its nature, was in direct competition with the Toronto Zoo,” wrote the zoo’s chief operating officer, Robin Hale, in the report to be tabled at an upcoming board meeting Nov. 27.

The most significant losses in 2014 came from ticket sales alone, accounting for nearly $3 million of the total revenue loss. The attendance drop was marked across all ticket groups — general admissions, school groups and memberships — according to the report.

The drop in attendance was also blamed on an overall decrease in leisure spending, according to several referenced surveys.

This summer, Toronto Zoo’s city board chair, Joe Torzsok, said he was still optimistic numbers could rebound after the zoo welcomed giant pandas Er Shun and Dao Mao midway through 2013.

There was also the welcome arrival and survival of baby Humphrey, the polar bear cub who went on display in February.

But attendance still dragged even after the pandas’ arrival and was not enough to break even or even approach last year’s record attendance.

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Torzsok said the zoo anticipated the decline and tried to strategize how to boost attendance while cutting costs.

One of the more successful strategies was using Groupon, an online coupon site, to attract guests at a discounted price, the report says. The zoo was able to sell 32,604 admissions that way.

“Our business plan allows for fluctuation in attendance and revenue while still ensuring we are mindful and minimize our cost to taxpayers — which we are doing by aggressively managing costs,” Torzsok wrote in an email while attending the zoo with his family on Saturday. “That said we still need to maintain focus for the rest of the year to perform as well as we can given the periods of really unfavorable weather we’ve had in the summer and now.”

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The report notes the zoo had one of its “best financial years” in 2013, which saw visitors climb to 1.4 million and revenues at $36.8 million. Last year, the zoo put $3 million towards a reserve fund.

By the end of this year, the zoo expects its net expenditures to be over budget by $368,000, a shortfall that will be balanced using those reserve funds.

The fund, which was set up to deal with attendance and other revenue decline over five years, will be reduced to $2 million at the end of this year, the report says.