{"id":16964,"date":"2014-12-07T12:46:43","date_gmt":"2014-12-07T17:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/?p=16964"},"modified":"2014-12-07T12:46:43","modified_gmt":"2014-12-07T17:46:43","slug":"niagara-festival-of-lights-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/07\/niagara-festival-of-lights-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Niagara Festival of Lights 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every year since I was 8,\u00a0\u00a0My family has spent\u00a0Thanksgiving in upstate NY and then headed over the following Saturday to the Falls. \u00a0That means that we were there for the first Winter Festival of Lights in 1983. \u00a0This was long before casinos and mega hotels. \u00a0This was when the Festival was even celebrated on the American side, people! \u00a0We visited\u00a0Rainbow Center and the Wintergarden. \u00a0THAT long ago. \u00a0In fact this is a picture of a display inside what WAS the Convention Center on the American side… and\u00a0is now the Seneca Niagara Casino Resort…<\/p>\n

\"Untitled-9\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(I have more if you want to see them!)<\/p>\n

Needless to say, we have seen many changes over the years. \u00a0We saw the Disney displays arrive, grow, then go. \u00a0The kids my parents brought to Niagara every year have grown and gone on to marry. \u00a0There is now a third\u00a0generation discovering the festival of Lights in the form of my niece and nephew who are even younger than we were when we started this Thanksgiving tradition.<\/p>\n

Here is what the display looked like in 2011. My niece’s first trip…<\/p>\n

\"Niagara<\/a><\/p>\n

There were Disney displays and that little village in front of Queen Victoria Place Gift Shop. That year that was a Carousel there too. \u00a0She saw the animals and animated\u00a0displays at Dufferin island that we always enjoyed. \u00a0Noah’s ark was always a favorite. \u00a0The dinosaurs didn’t make sense outside of the fact that they appeared around the time\u00a0Jurassic Park was out. \u00a0But I guess they have an appeal for little boys.<\/p>\n

Speaking of “appeal”, let’s talk about the new displays at Dufferin (pictures below). \u00a0While I appreciate the beauty,\u00a0concept\u00a0and engineering of the new displays\u00a0– my niece started talking about\u00a0“the banana”. \u00a0I didn’t get it at first, but then\u00a0I realized that the abstract centerpiece did, indeed,\u00a0look\u00a0like a banana being peeled.<\/p>\n

\"Moose<\/a><\/p>\n

Being a graphic designer and having worked in Marketing departments\u00a0for 20 years,\u00a0I could both appreciate what was being done here…and question what was being done here. \u00a0I’ll expound on that in a later post, but for now, I’ll wrap things up by saying I had\u00a0a wonderful time with my family during this trip. \u00a0As always, Niagara kicked off our Christmas season with style, and it wouldn’t be Christmas without it.<\/p>\n

So long until next time, Niagara…..<\/p>\n

\"Family<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every year since I was 8,\u00a0\u00a0My family has spent\u00a0Thanksgiving in upstate NY and then headed over the following Saturday to the Falls. \u00a0That means that we were there for the first Winter Festival of Lights in 1983. \u00a0This was long before casinos and mega hotels. \u00a0This was when the Festival was even celebrated on the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[47,41,4998,4869,10102,966,595,46,44],"class_list":["post-16964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-niagara-falls-news","tag-festival-of-lights","tag-niagara-falls","tag-niagara-falls-winter-festival-of-lights-2","tag-niagara-festival-of-lights","tag-queen-victoria-place-gift-shop","tag-seneca-niagara-casino","tag-thanksgiving","tag-wfol","tag-winter-festival-of-lights"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}