Dear Festival attendees,

Due to unforeseen circumstances, there will not be carnival rides at this year’s Festival. I know this comes as a disappointment to many of our festival attendees, including all of us. We have been working on trying to convince a carnival company to come to the Festival after natural disasters impacted the company that was secured earlier in the year. That caused the company to be unable to fulfill its commitment to the Florida Seafood Festival. We have worked diligently until this past Sunday to secure carnival-type rides but have yet to succeed. We have secured basic children’s event types of attractions such as (rock climbing wall, mega slide, and other small interactive games). We are still trying to contact anyone and everyone we can for rides and carnival entertainment. As volunteers, we work from December to November, preparing for the next year’s Festival. We are very sorry to have to make this announcement. We pride ourselves in producing the best product we possibly can. At this point, the show must go on. The 59th annual Florida Seafood Festival will still have over 75 Arts & Crafts Booths, 20 Food booths, two nights of great music, the Parade, Blue Crab Races, Redfish 5K Run, Oyster Shucking Contest, and Oyster Eating Contests, and the Blessing of the Fleet. As a Board, we are heartbroken not to have the carnival for our community.