SeventyOne
Platinum Member
It was definitely a planned show stop. My friends who rode on the New Orleans French Quarter float said during the two stops they were told to stop throwing and to dance. If you watch videos, you notice that the soundtrack changes after a loud horn and the lighting also changes, with moving lights, then the horn sounds again and the parade moves on
Figured the horn was an emergency signal. Again, not sure I get the point, much like grouping the stilt-walkers together.
The River boat, and the gator got awesome refurbishments. Looked like they touched up many of the floats. The "new" float that you speak of is from the Super Star parade...
It just doesn't seem to serve a purpose. No beads thrown, barely decorated. Like it was supposed to be something more.
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What do you mean by "has it's time passed?"
Mardi Gras seems to be doing it's job better than ever, basically Uni's version of F&W, the difference is, where most of your complaints are and from what i've experienced, the parking situation is a nightmare. They need to add on to that garage.
The real question should be has Uni gotten too big for it's current parking infrastructure? And to that, i'd say HELL YES.
Yeah, really entire transportation infrastructure. Garage needs work, but also need a more efficient way to move cars out of it and onto I-4 (where 90% are headed).
As for time has passed, it was needed for years to sell APs. In the mid-00s I imagine a lot of APs were sold during Mardi Gras, then not used again the rest of the year--maybe for parking at HHN. Now attendance would be fine without it. If they are going to keep it, they need to improve ops. Literally the same parking and crowd control measures they used in 2007 aren't cutting it in 2015.