Royals on parade
Nov. 4th, 2015 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mayhapThe parade experience was pretty amazing. Parts of it were amazingly awesome, whereas other parts were amazingly…other things.
We hadn't had one of these things in thirty years, so I suppose it's not surprising that everyone was a little out of practice. A lot of people who heeded the call to use Kansas City's public transportation ended up waiting for hours and/or not getting transported anywhere, which is not surprising considering that Kansas City's public transportation is not very good at the best of times. On the other hand, a lot of people who didn't take public transportation ended up doing crazy things like ditching their cars by the interstate to walk, which is also pretty suboptimal. My mom and I avoided both of these scenarios by dint of arriving at 8:30 AM for the 12:00 PM parade, which allowed us to park in an actual parking garage for a mere $10 and do all of our hours of waiting after we had secured spots separated only from the barrier lining the street by a group of tweens, who were short and easy to see over.
The parade itself was a lot of fun. We cheered and waved and took lots of pictures and videos, while the honorees smiled and waved and took pictures and videos of us in return, which I thought was pretty adorable. The whole front office got to march in the parade too, and they rounded it out with a few local high school marching bands and giant baseball floats. Everyone was so happy and excited and the atmosphere was great. There were tons of kids everywhere, unsurprisingly since I think every school for miles around was closed.
After the parade had passed us, we tried to get to where they were holding the rally by taking a straightforward route from point A to point B, with no particular indication that as we approached Union Station from the north we would end up penned in by barricades. We could see the blue and white sea of people, many of whom had apparently skipped the parade altogether to secure good places to watch the rally, from where we were standing at this barricade, so I suppose they didn't exactly have a lot more room for us. It was unclear what was supposed to happen, none of the police officers or parade staff on the other side of the barrier could or would answer our questions as to what was going to happen, and it was pretty frustrating, although I have to say the people we were barricaded in with were still pretty jazzed about being there overall, and we bonded over our adversity and attempts to decide what our next move should be.
They did eventually reconfigure the barricades so we could get through, and we squished just far enough into the crowd that we could see the giant video screen. I mean, we were actually very close to the stage! Just off to the side where we couldn't actually see anything that was going on there. But we could hear and sort of see everything, so that was pretty good.
They're estimating about 800,000 people were there, and I have no idea how sound their methodology is but it certainly seems plausible to me. Now we just need to host a bunch more World Series parades so we can master the logistics…
We hadn't had one of these things in thirty years, so I suppose it's not surprising that everyone was a little out of practice. A lot of people who heeded the call to use Kansas City's public transportation ended up waiting for hours and/or not getting transported anywhere, which is not surprising considering that Kansas City's public transportation is not very good at the best of times. On the other hand, a lot of people who didn't take public transportation ended up doing crazy things like ditching their cars by the interstate to walk, which is also pretty suboptimal. My mom and I avoided both of these scenarios by dint of arriving at 8:30 AM for the 12:00 PM parade, which allowed us to park in an actual parking garage for a mere $10 and do all of our hours of waiting after we had secured spots separated only from the barrier lining the street by a group of tweens, who were short and easy to see over.
The parade itself was a lot of fun. We cheered and waved and took lots of pictures and videos, while the honorees smiled and waved and took pictures and videos of us in return, which I thought was pretty adorable. The whole front office got to march in the parade too, and they rounded it out with a few local high school marching bands and giant baseball floats. Everyone was so happy and excited and the atmosphere was great. There were tons of kids everywhere, unsurprisingly since I think every school for miles around was closed.
After the parade had passed us, we tried to get to where they were holding the rally by taking a straightforward route from point A to point B, with no particular indication that as we approached Union Station from the north we would end up penned in by barricades. We could see the blue and white sea of people, many of whom had apparently skipped the parade altogether to secure good places to watch the rally, from where we were standing at this barricade, so I suppose they didn't exactly have a lot more room for us. It was unclear what was supposed to happen, none of the police officers or parade staff on the other side of the barrier could or would answer our questions as to what was going to happen, and it was pretty frustrating, although I have to say the people we were barricaded in with were still pretty jazzed about being there overall, and we bonded over our adversity and attempts to decide what our next move should be.
They did eventually reconfigure the barricades so we could get through, and we squished just far enough into the crowd that we could see the giant video screen. I mean, we were actually very close to the stage! Just off to the side where we couldn't actually see anything that was going on there. But we could hear and sort of see everything, so that was pretty good.
They're estimating about 800,000 people were there, and I have no idea how sound their methodology is but it certainly seems plausible to me. Now we just need to host a bunch more World Series parades so we can master the logistics…
