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Once forbidden, secret and shrouded in
silence, Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World has opened it's doors to the
public. But just the idea of a place being off limits, is
intriguing. What goes on in there?
To get to Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World across the Mississippi River
in Algiers, we find our way to the free Canal
Street Ferry that leaves every half an hour. The ride over is
less than 10 minutes and then just a short walk to the 75,000 foot
warehouse!
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Before we
have even entered, the
fun begins.
Outside are props and
figures big enough to
make us gasp.
Marilyn Monroe with her
skirt flying, alligators
ready to swallow several
humans in a gulp (or so
we imagine), and heads
thirty times normal sit
on the sidewalks to
greet us.
Inside,
our guide directs us to
the theater and shows us
a video explaining the
history of Mardi Gras
and the Kern family.
As it turns out, Blaine
Kern's is "just" another
family-run business.
They've been building
floats since 1947 and
now create 75% of all
the Mardi Gras floats
and props and maintain
the largest fleet of
parade floats
WORLDWIDE! |
| Blaine Kern turns out nearly 700 Mardi Gras floats a year in New
Orleans, complete with 3-D props, figures, icons and fiber-optic
lighting. And if you're in the business of
amusement parks, theme
parks, casinos and bowl
games, they can help you
there too! You'll
see their work in
creations from Universal
Studios in Orlando,
Florida, and Japan's
famous Toho Theme Park,
Philadelphia's
Thanksgiving Day Parade,
carnival parades in
Antibes and Juan Les
Pin, France.
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Click on any image for a larger view
After the video, our guide (who clearly has done this routine
hundreds of times) herds us expertly into the next room to receive a
drink and a piece of King's Cake, which tastes like a (kind of dry)
cinnamon roll with purple, green and yellow frosting. She tells us
that one of us will probably bite on something hard, and if so, we are
lucky and get a 'little something' from the gift shop.
Now if you're like me and never been to Mardi Gras, you may not know
what King's Cake is, so you might like to read a little history
as presented by Gambino's Bakery in New Orleans.
After spitting out the Kings Cake (shhh, don't tell) in the nearest
trash, (no one in our group claims the prize, by the way) we are guided through the working sections from one 'den' to
another. Feeling really small as we traipse through the warehouse,
surrounded by giants, we see artists at work, repairing, painting,
sculpting, drawing, designing.
CONTINUED
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