The Fenton Marching Tigers travel to Cedar Point for HalloWeekend Parade

Carly Riggs, Opinion Editor
September 26, 2016

Every year, Cedar Point celebrates Halloween with Halloweekends, which entails many things for guests such as haunted houses, scare zones and other attractions. HalloWeekends also kick off with a parade; since 2005 that parade has invited high school marching bands to participate, Fenton being one of those bands invited. The Marching Tigers have loaded onto charter buses at 8 a.m. and taken the two and a half hour journey to Sandusky, Ohio where Cedar Point; the 365-acre amusement park sits for its HalloWeekend parade.

“It’s my third time going on the trip and I really can’t wait to go again,” senior Kenneth Reed said. “The parade is always a bit of a challenge because we just play Thriller over and over again, and the parade is really long but it’s cool to march by the people waiting on the sides and see their faces as we play. It’s different than being in the Homecoming parade or the Jingle Fest parade because the people who watch you at Cedar Point are people you don’t know and they still seem to like it as much as your friends and family do.”

Veterans of the trip for HalloWeekend have some idea of what to expect from the activities like the rides and the parade. Those new to the trip, however, can only base their expectations on friends and others who have gone previously.

“It will be my first year on the trip and I am so excited for so many things,” junior Katie Hallwood said. “I can’t wait to ride the rides and see the different people who have dressed up for the HalloWeekends. I know the parade will probably be really long and hot, but it’s a great experience and I don’t think that will change how much fun I have.”

While it is the first Cedar Point trip for a few of the marching band members this is not the first trip for band director Andrew Perkins, he has orchestrated the trip since the early 2000s for a number of reasons, one of which being exposure.

“I think that it is important that the students go on the trip to Cedar Point because it’s really one of the biggest platforms for exposure that is available to us,” Perkins said. “Over 5000 people watch us perform; it is one of the biggest crowds we see and I love that the students get to be a part of something like that.”

After rides have been ridden, the parade has been marched and the fun has been had, the members of the band have to climb back on the bus for the return trip home. It will be the last HalloWeekend parade trip for some, the first for others and hopefully an event that the Fenton Marching Tigers will participate in again many times in the years to come.