Longwood Christmas Parade 2008

Every year, Santa Claus come around on a fire truck through Longwood, FL. In the past, it has always been Santa on the truck, and not much else. This year it seems that Longwood has expanded their Santa procession into a mini parade, with fire trucks, police cars, some candy throwing floats, and Santa. It was nowhere on the scale of the Orlando Christmas Parade, but this was kind of better. The parade comes to your house...

Mcdonald's Christmas Parade 2008

I went to see the Christmas Parade in Orlando on December 14, 2008. Formerly, this was the Orlando Christmas Parade, but it seemed a corporate sponsor bought the parade with the official name being the Mcdonald's Christmas Parade. The parade circled around Lake Eola and was nice and long.

It started out with the police.




Then Ronald Mcdonald's float.



There were several of these antique cars advertising Cabot Cheese. Cheese is tasty, but it doesn't go with antique cars in my opinion.


These horses were behind a float carrying a bubble machine. The bubbles seemed to be making the horses very nervous.


Johnny Martino from the Godfather movies. He was handing out autographed postcards of himself.


This float was driven all the way to Orlando from a high school in Palm Beach.


Juggler...


A pony pulling a person that seemed to big to be pulled by ponies.


The Geico Gecko...


Followed by the Tijuana Flats Iguana.


Apparently people are scared of clowns. There was a group of clowns in the parade, besides from Ronald Mcdonald. This clown in particular actually left the parade route to chase down somebody with coulrophobia across a little park at the intersection of Magnola and Palmetto. It was great.


The Orlando Fire Department.


This is Sir Gus the Kissing Camel. He travels around with the Shriners to events like this. The Shriners stick a carrot in a volunteer's mouth, and Gus reaches down and takes the carrot, thus kissing the volunteer in the process. I was kissed by Sir Gus once in Downtown Longwood.


And finally, Santa Claus at the end of the parade. Unfortunately, there was no Krampus traveling along with Santa. There should be a few of them in every Christmas parade!

Universal Studios Mardi Gras Parade

On February 23, I went to Universal Studios for their Mardi Gras event and the Third Eye Blind concert that night. They have a parade each Saturday before the concert where they throw out thousands upon thousands of beads and a smaller number of coins. It's a whole lot of fun, but riding on a float in a parade is even more fun. I didn't think this would happen this year when I saw this, but it turns out I managed to get a ride in the parade without paying (technically, shouldn't they be paying you?) by being at the right place at the right time.

You started out by walking to your float, passing by all of the rest along the way.

You then got to the assigned float and boarded.

The fun part began once you started moving through the streets of the park having thousands of people begging you for cheap plastic beads.

And in what seems like no time at all, the parade was over. I missed some of the concert, but all is good. I rode on a float...

Leaving the park I saw these people. Is it possible to go overboard when collecting the beads? I wonder if any of the beads were thrown by me?