From my family to yours, I like to wish you a very Happy New Year! To ring in 2012, I took my family to the Orange County Great Park for Great Night. The OC Great Park is the only place in California (or the entire west coast, for that matter) where you can celebrate New Year’s Eve with your family in a fun, secure environment and still be home or at another party by 10pm. How do they do that? They set the clock to East Coast time and celebrate when Dick Clark drops the ball on Time Square.
Irvine’s Family New Year’s Eve party features live music, dancing, great food, carousel rides, games and activities for the kids – all in a safe, alcohol free environment. The event reflects music and images of each decade from the 1940s to the present. Local dance groups perform dances from each era, and everyone got down as a DJ spun tunes from the disco era in the Hangar 244 Lounge. They even got a 10 foot disco ball!
There were military vehicles and vintage cars on display and Sally got to create artistic crafts, and enjoy the carousel ride. We were also able to send New Year’s Eve photos to friends and family and post them on Facebook from one of four special high-tech photo booths on site.
Southland Mega Groove, a popular 5-piece band with versatile vocalists, rocked the night away with songs from across the decades. At 8:30 PM, the Park transformed into a party atmosphere in time to ring in the New Year with a pop of streamers, party hats and noise makers. Great fun for the entire family and I was able to get Sally back home and in bed by 10PM. The best part was, the entire event was free ($10 for parking)!
I have to tip my party off to the City of Irvine for coming up with this concept. Irvine is an EXTREMELY family friendly city. It’s one of the reasons I made Irvine my new home and events like this just shows I made the right decision. Happy New Year everyone!
Did you enjoy this post? Get John Chow Dot Com updates via email...
Stay up to date with all of John Chow’s tips for making money online and blog posts by subscribing via email. Your email will be kept private and never shared with anyone.
One of the most common complaint (or excuse) I hear from potential new bloggers is they don’t know how to install WordPress. Terms like FTP and CPanel are like a foreign language and setting up a database might as well be setting up the space shuttle for a launch. Because of the technology barrier, many would-be bloggers never start their blogs...
{ 15 comments }
Lot of people feel about the Orange County Great Park as money’s been spent on it. Happy New Year from http://yesshop.yolasite.com/blog.php !
That was awesome New Year for you and your family John. Wish you good luck
@BobRoberto Happy New Year and good luck to your in 2012 as well.
Free party, now that is awesome.
@fas It was pretty awesome. Also, Irvine police shut down 3 lights to manually do traffic control. Took us a mere 5 minutes to leave the area. Very well done.
Hey John,
It looks like you and especially Sally had a good time. The park is awesome. Happy New Year to you, Your Family and Everybody!
Cheers.
@Vance Sova Happy New Year Vance. See you in 2012!
Happy new year to you too John. It looks you had a great time
Cheers,
Jorge
Happy New Year!
Happy new year to you too John!
Happy New Years and I hope everybody has an even better year than last year.
Great video and pictures looks very neat and children friendly event. Sally looks like enjoying it a lot. Happy New Year to you John and your loved ones.
happy new year john,please keep blogging. we need your guidance
Hey John! Southland Mega Groove and myself thank you for posting the video of the New Years Eve Celebration at the Great Park! It was truly a great evening for all the family! We want to thank the City of Irvine and Utopia Entertainment for allowing us the honor. We wish you and your family a happy and prosperous new year! And Sally is adorable! Give her a hug from the band!
Dan Hill
Southland Mega Groove
@DHillSouthlandMegaGroove You guys rocked the house! I hope to hear more from SMG in the future.