Took the family to Carnival tonight for opening night with what I would call cautious optimism, I’d heard it was going to be bigger and better then last year, more immersive more entertaining more everything. My first thought was well yeah that’s hard, last year was so underwhelming half way through I thought about leaving and only stayed cause i felt like having a rest.
The fact a ticket is included with our locals pass was the only reason we attended tonight after last year I wouldn’t have bothered paying for a seperate ticket.
So fingers crossed we arrived at 5:30 to enter the park the usual “please mind your social distance” rang out everywhere and enforced random places. You enter and notice the size of the structure on the lake, impressive we have a little bit of hope. Gone is the stage area on the water from last year where dancers entered and hid for 15min to reappear and dance off.
We make our way past the penguin area (Rio) and notice a food truck some dancers and couple games. Nice food already and we’re 50m into the park. The kids danced we played a game and moved on,
We head to vortex for a quick ride, long line but high load capacity made it quick to get on, even at night the views are amazing, and I was getting way to excited seeing Leviathan lite up in the distance and thinking about the sound and look of the coaster flying around the track at night,
We leave vortex, head past the lagoon and arrive at Mexico, more food dockside tavern doubles as fiesta feast, more games, mask decorating and now fire twirlers and stilt walkers.
We watch the fire play check out the giant skull and move on into New Orleans, we arrive as street party “parade” is dancing its way along, We got dancers, juggling acts, bands it’s really a hive of activity, all the normal food retail is open plus cocktails and couple more food trucks we decided to eat the burrito’s and loaded fries which were amazing surprise surprise I know but way better then park food, actually just good in general no complaints from anyone,
Coctail down “also good” we moved on to Africa it was nice to see cast away bay used as I remember last year there was nothing there or at least that I seen maybe I missed it but I didn’t this year. African dancers more food and ice cream plus battle boats open we skipped Infinity “been there done that” and made our way back to Aqua Light Show.
C’mon guys surely we can come up with a name better then the amazing Aqua Lightshow??? But here we are sitting almost centre about 4 rows waiting, kids eating ice cream waiting for 8:30 to roll around, then bang the flames go off the music starts and we get a couple of fireworks, this is new there’s anticipation, it’s buildings then bang more flames more fireworks and the water starts, everything in time with the music it’s building nicely. We get our first performers 4 drummers with lighted drums and water vibrating up with every hit, break dancers centre stage, the wife approved. All the while the music, water, lights, lazers and fireworks all timed together with the dancer, so far so good.
Jetskis have arrived circling at first then rigged with fireworks the join in circling the island, perfoming some simple manoeuvres all in time and couple of near miss passes and side by side runs all with in time fireworks being set off from a setup on the back of the ski’s looks awesome. Drummers return dancers follow the music turns up the water effects are everywhere and it’s fireworks galore then bang the final major sequence of colour, fire and music and the place goes dark and the crowd erupts.
The kids 4,10,15 all loved it, I went in thinking so poorly I had no hope but wow what a show hats off to them from last year to this year %100 improvement I would pay to go again we enjoyed the entire experience that much.
Sure things could be improved from a Covid stand point, packed park lots of family’s and 1 ride attendant to load unload and clean the a ride makes for slow moving lines and a great excuse not to do the rides,
Some areas some quieter then others so don’t have the same atmosphere, Jet rescue was running but no music or anything carnival related around there, running the tmnt show is nice for the kids but would love to see something carnival or Mexican related seeing as it is in the Mexican area,
Be interesting to hear what others thought, it’s not disney World of Color nor should we expect it to be but it was vast improvement from last year and I was pleasantly surprised!!
I say job well done
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