Pet Masquerade & Red Party

October 25, 2007





Pet Masquerade & Red Party





Fantasy Fest roars on as the week progresses with a variety of crazy events and preparations for the big parade Saturday night ongoing. The float builders continue to make excellent progress as both major sections of the float are well underway. Testing of the motion of the oil derrick section was taking place and it seemed to work flawlessly. Now, we just need to get busy getting our costumes together. Of course it would be much easier if we didn’t spend every evening attending other Fantasy Fest events. Last night, we hit two more major happenings, the Pet Masquerade and Fogarty’s 6th annual Red Party.





Rhett & Melissa


The Pet Masquerade is one of the few family friendly Fantasy Fest events. Held again this year at The Westin resort, the Pet Masquerade brings out a huge cross section of Keys residents in a competition to determine which pets are decked out in the best costumes. Dogs, Cats, Exotic Birds, Ducks, Turtles, Pot-Bellied Pigs and even a pet Lobster all showed up to help benefit the Lower Keys Friends of Animals. As always there was a crazy collection of people and their animals, the vast majority of them locals.

Kelsey

Amy

Martha & Lobster Boy

Later in the evening, after decking ourselves out in red, Kathy & I went down to get in line for what has become in six years one of the most popular, imitated and well attended parties of Fantasy Fest week. In fact recent additions of the Green Party and the Plaid Party demonstrate that imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery. It was Fogarty’s bar & restaurant that started the simple theme of having all attendees dress in some form of the color Red to attend. It has taken off, so much so that there was a long, long line waiting to get into the party that was long when we arrived and longer still when we eventually made our way home, despite a massive rain storm that drenched the assembled throng.

Kathy & Michael

The throng

Kathy, Rick & Amy