Staff Blog
Why the giant Carnival Cruise Lines pinata wasn’t demolished yesterday (and a “soon, very soon!” declaration)
 |
 |
| Photos | Andy Newman |
In South Philly on Sunday, Carnival Cruise Lines set the world record for building the world's largest piñata. The company invited Philly residents to check out the piñata at Broad and Washington and be part of a commercial shoot. The original plan was to tear down the six-story beast with a wrecking ball, and spill more than 8,000 pounds of candy (mostly sugary stuff, no chocolate) onto the ground. Nearly 10,000 people showed up — only to walk away disappointed when the piñata was never demolished.
"There was some sort of technical difficulty with the commercial shoot," says Jen Dobrzelecki, a spokesperson for Carnival Cruise Lines. "Since we got so many people — more than we anticipated — we decided to break it on another day."
Dobrzelecki says they hope to officially break the piñata later this week, but they are waiting on confirmation from the Philadelphia Police Department. (Spilling that much candy on a crowd in Philly — you'd want police protection, too.)
We'll update you as soon as they set a date and time.
The reason it was not broken Sunday, was because of the crazy crowd!! My family was there and it all started great, then as more people came and they started giving away pretzels,ice cream and soda. The crowd became a mob. Police on motorcycles were called in and every time they tried to break the pinata with the wrecking ball, people would run toward it. It is candy for goodness sake. Very disappointing day. We can have 2 million plus people for a parade and cant’s get together some others for free candy. ????????????
it was pretty disappointing and poorly organized if i must say…you had 4 cops and a bunch of teenagers in “red shirts” trying to control a crowd of 10,000 people. carnival cruise, you should be ashamed of yourself b/c if this was a publicity stunt, well, you got it but unfortunately it was bad publicity…a lot of people like myself left with a bad taste in my mouth for carnival cruises…again, may i emphasize, poorly organized…if it was better planned out, i’m sure they could have destroyed it and kept the crowd under control…disappointing…
it was rumored that the crowd was bigger then they planned for but if you didn’t want anyone to know about it then why advertise “free candy, giant pinata, world record”???? if you wanted to keep it low-key, then bring the event to some no-name hick town…what where you thinking?? bringing this kind of thing to philly? after all they city is still hyped up over the world championship win! i agree, the event lacked organization and was definitely not well thought out…all it resulted in was a bunch of pissed off parents and disappointed kids. if this is the kind crap you can expect from carnival cruises then count me out. i’m never going to cruise with them. besides royal caribbean and norweigen have nicer ships. carnival is crap compared to them.
It was poorly organized. They announced to all of us there first you needed your wristband to enter and they’d take people over from Funville in groups but only about 300 would be in the fenced in area while it was broken for safety reasons-understandable. But they didn’t check whom came in first, etc. Pretty pitiful on their end!
When it was canceleed some employees began YELLING at already upset people. I walked away but at that time I was insulted and dissapointed.
We arrived at 11am and waited in line till 1:40. People cut in line and the police’s response was, “This is not our gig. Talk to Carnival”. There was no public address system and no method of giving out info.
As we entered “Funville” we were told we had to register right away and get a wrist band if we wanted to go across the street, but we had to hurry. The drawing for the cruises was seperate and they were being held in the tent at “Funville”. If you went across the street you were not allowed to re-enter and you had to be present to win.
We choose to stay at “Funville”. They ran out of almost everything. The workers were rude because the people were rude. Go figure after you wait in line for almost 3 hrs! I have never seen anything so pooly organized. Carnival is so lucky that the Phillies had just won the World Series and everybody was in a good mood. This could have gotten real ugly.
So then sometime between 3 & 3:30 they canceled the pinata. The two excuses we heard from people working was that there was technical difficulty. Then another guy who claimed to be in charge told us there was too many people. They did not expect that many people. They expeced between 1,500 and 2,000. They got over 10,000. Go figure you hand things out all over Philly while there’s over a million people at a parade and broadcast over the radio for a week - free food, free cruises, games, live music and you don’t expect half of south Philly to show up?! Sounded so good we drove from NJ. We knew it was going to be crowded but figured they knew that. WRONG!!!
Carnival needs to go back to the drawing board and plan something that will work. Then come back and do it right. They owe Philly that!!!!
What a joke and major waste of time. I hope Carnival is better at doing cruises than promoting them!!! The was a mess. Totally unorganized.
They said they were afraid nobody was going to show. Let’s see you go to a poor section of a major city and shout “FREE, FREE, FREE” and then are amazed when 20,000 people show up looking for free stuff?!?!
90% of this crowd could not afford the taxes and gratuity on a cruise if they won it! I saw people stealing ketchup and mustard packets when they ran out of food! Standing in line for 3 hours to get in only to stand in line for another 30 minutes to get a hot dog or ice cream!!!
Carnival is lucky this did not turn in to a real mess!!! As it is the few real customers that showed up are now so disgusted with Carnival they will likely never choose the cruise line.
Carnival didn’t know the Philly public is to a certain extent comprised of animals. The per capita gun murder rate might have clued them in a bit. (Re. the post about the Phillies parade: I saw two arguments involving repeated, “I will kill you,” just in one block of Pine after the parade. How many arrests and how much property damage on the day?)
However, I agree Carnival didn’t think through or organize the event well. What did they think would happen? And they kept people waiting for hours while their inept crowd control efforts shuffled people back and forth. They could have just capped the crowd at a safe controllable number and stayed to the announced schedule, but Carnival’s greed for a mass of people in the shot probably equalled the greed of the people willing to trample others and tear down fences for some free candy.
Carnival is totally cynical about “technical problems.” The event was under-planned and under-staffed. They’ll still use the 10k crowd footage in the commercial, you can bet on that. So they got what they wanted, albeit with a bit of local, negative publicity….
The pinata is much cuter looking in these aerial photos than it was in person, although it looked a lot bigger than in these pics.
The truth of the matter is “free” people to add to the actors who were hired. Carnival Cruise only wanted to pay x amount of actors, both union and non-union but they were looking for tons of people to be in the commercial for FREE. Let people know you’re giving things away coupled by a chance to be on television, and you have instantaneous chaos. Shame on ALL of those who were involved with organizing this mess. I applaud the actors, police and crew who attempted to make a commercial against such odds!!!
I was one of the actors that was hired to be part of the commercial, and this was probably the WORST thought out commercial shoot ever. I blame Carnival and ONLY Carnival. We began shooting around 7 AM on Sunday morning, and by 11:00 AM a crowd was already standing outside the flimpsy fences. People would try to enter, while the production staff tried to 1) keep them at bay, for safety reasons, and 2) get the commercial shot. They were not aware of what was to follow.
Around 1:00 Carnival started allowing OUTSIDE folks in, in small numbers, and were told that they were to stay BEHIND the working actors. This lasted about 5 minutes. They thought that if they got close enough they could get MORE candy. As people outside say that there were people inside, tempers flairs and myself and other actors, began to fear for what was to come.
About an hour later, a A.D. ( assistant Director) told us to go back to “HOLDING” about two blocks away for our safety. At this point I could see she was scared, and that made me scared as well. As we were ATTEMPTING to file out one by one from the parking lot, people were pushing and shoving to get in. We had to have Police escort to leave.
After another 1 hr and 30 minutes we were told that the Police worrying about safety had called off the Breaking of the Pinata.
I have no idea what Carnival was thinking when they told me that they were going to be able to go underneath a 6 story structure that had no foundation.
There was no way I was going near it, especially after they hit it with a wrecking ball, there are too many variables that were not thought through.
I heard the “technical difficulty” was really the trick pin to the pinata trap door malfunctioned and the wrecking ball was made out of styrofoam. That is pretty hilarious if you ask me.
[...] 7, 2008 · No Comments Beware of cruise lines bearing gifts… In South Philly on Sunday, Carnival Cruise Lines set the world record for building the [...]