Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty Images News / Getty Images
(Key West, FL) - Key West's 10-day annual Fantasy Fest ends this weekend with an exotic parade.
Festival director Nadene Grossman Orr says the colorful event rakes in about $40 million dollars in hospitality business revenue.
The 10-day festival is also an important fundraising opportunity for local and regional nonprofits and boosts the local tourism-based economy and resident workforce.
The 2024 Key West Fantasy Fest theme is, “It’s a 90s Neon Cosmic Carnival!” to showcase the 90s era and its touchstones as well as “cosmic” carnival pageantry.
Orr promises the parade will be over-the-top.
“There are very lavish floats, enormous float productions, and groups of 100 or more dancers who will be costumed in theme with those floats to dance and sing and perform,” advised Grossman Orr.
“You know, they have just a couple of minutes to make such an impression, and they really, really work on this for months — and they're going to knock our socks off,” she added.
“This is such a boost to everyone here in the community, in the hospitality business and otherwise,” Grossman Orr added. “It's just such a fun, high-spirited lift for the community on so many levels,”
The festival features dozens of glamorous masquerades, elaborate parties and themed costume competitions, all culminating in the Key West Fantasy Fest Parade Saturday night, Oct. 26.
Expected to attract tens of thousands of spectators to Key West's historic downtown, the spectacle includes dazzling large-scale motorized floats, elaborately garbed marching groups and dance troupes in exotic costumes.