Grey Cup Festival

[theaardvark]

Will they have rye bread, kube and cheese cubes at the social at midnight?  With pickles and flourescent yellow mustard?

If SSK is in the cup, there is going to be a massive Rider presence.  Even if they aren't, you can bet a lot have already made plans to come. 

Can you imagine the Blue and Gold faction vs. Green faction, with neither in the final?  Would be weird...

If the Bombers had been in, I'm probably all over the festivities.  Unfortunately, I don't drink, not much of a party guy, so I won't be there, or at the game. 

Have fun everyone.

[Throw Long Bannatyne]

CFL Awards on CFL+ Thursday night. Vaval won both of his awards.

[Tecno]

Took the kids to the street festival tonight.  The UofW stuff, on Spence and in the building right there.  Pretty sparsely attended right now.  But that's pretty normal for Thu as most travelers won't arrive until Fri or Sat.

Saw WPG, SSK and CGY jerseys, and one MTL gear guy.  Not much else yet, but I'm sure they'll come soon.

The street portion is a bit leaner than all the stuff they had in BC last year, and maybe less than '23 in HAM too.  But the inside part is amazing!  They really went all out.  The entire building has been turfed over and activites/games are everywhere -- really packed in there.  I'd say there's twice as much stuff as was inside in BC.  Lots of stuff for kids to try, as well as enough to keep youth/adults interested too.  The turf feels great -- is that the old IGF turf? 

The bouncy castles were "just" the ones from the PAS games, but separated into different areas.  Kids loved it.  Not as big as the "world's biggest bouncy castle" setup in BC last year, but my kids didn't even notice.  These ones are blue (and gold) so they are better!

A shout out to the volunteers: they are awesome.  Really top notch.  Some in BC were iffy.  In WPG they are basically all the nice ladies that are often the fan ambassadors at PAS games.  They were great with my kids, and chatty with daddy.  Super A+ to all of them.  WPG for some reason always has the best volunteers.

I'll be going back tomorrow, as we only had under 2 hours tonight.  The weather is still good.  Everyone should be encouraging families to head out there.  No excuse!  These things are always underutilized for the amount of effort put in.  And it's all FREE!

[Waffler]

The turf feels great -- is that the old IGF turf? 

Hasn't the turf been there over 10 years? They had the 2015 Grey Cup family activities in there and also the 2018 combine did too. It did feel good though. Like new.

A shout out to the volunteers: they are awesome. 

Amen to this. Friendly and helpful.

[Tecno]

Back at the festival today (Friday).  Much busier -- maybe 4X vs Thurs -- but still tons of open space and capacity.  People, show up!!

The fireworks at 7:30 was aaaaamazing.  They had it off the top of 3 buildings, all around that square in front of U of W on Portage.  They did 4-5 songs and had the fireworks synced up to them.  The Ring of Fire was awesome!!

People driving down Portage right in front at that time did a good job not crashing while doing the looky-loo.  I'd say at the time way more people were inside than out, so tons of people missed it.  Everyone in WPG not there, especially if you have kids, really missed out.  GCF (& WM?) went all out on this one.

You can't beat the weather for the last 2 hours of the festival, as the rain stopped, and it was balmy enough to have the jacket open.  The inside was probably the busiest part, but still no more than 1-3 min wait to do any one activity (bouncy castles being the longest).

The long-snapping stations gave up on snapping and were just having people throw the ball.  LOL.  My son insisted on long-snapping.  Turns out he's a natural!  Might have to work on developing that!

The DJ closing the night outside was amazing.  Dude is doing hardcore house music all night then starts playing the violin to the beatz!  Got the small crowd revved up when he did that.  Awesome.  Dude looks like Charles Leclerc.

On the adult side of things, which my kids make impossible, my STH lady friend got to meet & selfie with Willie J and Tait at some event!  She's living the dream!

A few more Green fans tonight.  And some HAM fans (they travel well).  Still not seeing much else.  No sign of MTL, OTT, TOR, BC, EDM.  Probably better odds at the adult & pay venues.

Great job GCF organizers and WM!

[Tecno]

Hasn't the turf been there over 10 years? They had the 2015 Grey Cup family activities in there and also the 2018 combine did too.

Ah, possibly!  I didn't know WPG had an indoor football/soccer size venue with actual turf, let alone at the U of W!  It is legit turf, with the little black marbles.  Very nice atmosphere for a GC festival.

[Sway]

Kyle Walter's here tonite

[Sway]

Kyle Walter's here tonite

I Just went and talked to him haha,

I said Mike is back as opening line... im a couple few beers in

He Says we will be good among other things

I bet he's outta here

[Sway]

He's at Cowtown if any body wants to chat

[gobombersgo]

O'Shea was also at the Convention Centre.