Campus Dining brought western movies to life with a “western-themed” dining experience at The 90, at the University of Kentucky.

Wildcat West featured a mechanical bull, cowboy hat customization and glass boot mugs with themed food and drinks on Thursday, Sept. 25.

Devon Hurley, UK marketing director and event manager, said the event had been in the planning stage since last April.

“It really takes a lot of coordination between a lot of different people. So, obviously, we had to coordinate with the dining hall team on the menu, to get everything planned for that, so it’s on theme,” Hurley said. “Then we also have outside vendors with the mechanical bull that we’ve had, you know, focused on months in advance.”

The first “Wildcat West” event took place four years ago, and campus dining decided to bring it back “bigger and better than ever”, according to Hurley.

“Some of these are sort of built on tradition, things that we’ve been doing for many years,” Hurley said. “We have particular things that we want to highlight … and then sometimes it’s just like we have a fun idea and we’re like, how can we turn this into an event.”

Hurley said that campus dining hosts these events for students and encourages them to attend because the events are always free.

“It’s just a great opportunity to try, maybe, new foods that they haven’t had before,” Hurley said. “There’s always some kind of engagement activity going on. So it’s a nice way to just, like, have fun in between classes and studying.”

Lexi Clark, a freshman landscape architecture major, visited Wildcat West specifically to make a customizable cowboy hat.

“I like that it said you could customize them. I was intrigued by that,” Clark said. “I wanted to learn more and see what it was. So I’m very happy with the result.”

Clark said that the mechanical bull inside the dining hall was odd, but found it interesting.

“I like to keep my dinner in,” Clark said. “Last time I was on an electric bull, I felt so many new muscles that I didn’t even know were there. So I’ll sit this one out, but I’ll definitely be watching.”

Jayden Burke, a sophomore political science major, went to The 90 to eat, not realizing the event was happening and ended up being one of the first to ride the mechanical bull.

“I saw the bull, and I was like, I have to ride that,” Burke said. “But now I’m going to look at everything else, like the hat-making and the boot mugs and everything else.”

Burke rode the bull for 24 seconds.

“I tried, that’s all that matters,” said Burke.