YOU + GIANT PIÑATA = AWESOME. We made history again and set another Guinness World Record for the “World’s Largest Piñata” - that was 6 stories tall - Sunday, November 2nd in Philadelphia. Relive the Fun Crowd events below hosted by John Heald - Sr. Cruise Director.
See how we set the record for the world’s largest beach ball here.
But, the fun doesn’t end when the crowd disperses. Soon this page will be home to FUNVILLE, your gateway to all things that make you want to stand up and shout, “Wahoo! Now that’s what I call fun!”
OK. This is Emily G, I was at the record-breaking event today. So, uh, I’ll point out the obvious, that there’s no video or pictures of the record-breaking pinata being smashed or anything. Why could that be?
True to Carnival’s PR copy, the fun did not in fact end when the crowd dispersed. This is because the fun never began, and the crowd dispersed after two hours of waiting in the cold when the announcement came via megaphone that the event was canceled. The event didn’t make most attendees want to shout “Wahoo!” so much as “Let’s burn this mother to the ground!”
We flagged down one of the official-looking guys after about an hour and a half to ask if he had any idea of when the smashing was going to go down. A lady next to me with her kid mentioned that it was kind of cold (it was) and that we’d been waiting a long time. The guy said all cranky-like, “Well, I’ve been here since 4:30 in the morning, so I’m really cold, too.” He then disavowed any knowledge of what was going on, when the thing might happen and if it was going to happen at all.
I think the obvious response here was that he was being paid to be here, whereas we gawkers were, as part of the huge crowd that publicity stunts like this try to attract, offering up ourselves as promotional material for Carnival Cruises in exchange for getting to see a giant pinata get smashed with a wrecking ball. Which would have been so worth it, had it actually happened. But whatever.
Apparently the problem was that they were unprepared for the amount of people who showed up (about 7,000, according to Mr. John Heald), and even called the police in to help. This kind of doesn’t make sense, as the people inside the fence had all been let in, most people were stuck outside. The gist I got from our friend who was inside was that they couldn’t keep people behind a line of cones or something.
Seriously, Carnival, were you not watching the news in Philly these last couple of days? Did you seriously think that a dozen cranky dudes in red sweatshirts and some traffic cones were going to be enough to keep Philadelphians from getting out of hand? We set ‘celebratory fires’ in this town. Cones? Please.
My guess is that even if they reschedule the pinata-smashing with better (or any) security and safety measures, that thing’s somehow going to get destroyed in a more Philly-esque manner: by a drunken mob in the middle of the night.
