Riverside’s Festival of Lights

I’ve been wanting to go to Riverside’s Festival of Lights for a long time now and I finally did it this year. Yay, but whatever. I say whatever because things didn’t start on time and that rubbed me and a bunch of festival attendees in the wrong way.

Thank goodness the event was free and thank goodness that I took the Metrolink there.

I think I’d be super annoyed if I drove all the way there only to search for parking and pay for parking.

Don’t get me wrong. The lights were nice. The fireworks were nice. Super nice, actually.

What wasn’t nice was the “slight” disorganization. Please start at 4:30 pm if you say you’re going to start at 4:30 pm. I suppose I really shouldn’t be in so much of a hissy about this when the event is free but still.

Creepy People

I don’t think I saw any woman come to this festival alone with an exception to yours truly here. And I think it shouldn’t matter as everyone – male or female has a right to go anywhere solo. It bugged me when I noticed creepy men eyeing me. (If I was with a group of girls, would they still be leering at me? And to think I looked super average compared to the bulk of hot Hispanic girls present at the festival. Not sure what’s in Riverside’s water, but the Hispanic guys and girls of Riverside are super good looking. But then again, I don’t know for sure if all the hotties I saw were actually Riverside locals.)

Creepy guys aside, I came across a few people that seemed to have an issue with me taking a selfie alone. (Like I said earlier, there is nothing wrong with going to places alone!) While they didn’t say anything, their judgmental eyes said it all.

A Family Affair

There was a lot of people at the festival and while I expected that, I wasn’t too crazy with having to be constantly surrounded by children that weren’t so well mannered. But this, I suppose you would have to blame the parents for not raising their children to be a bit better mannered. Example: Some child (and his siblings) kept bumping into my umbrella. Not funny.

It also bugged me when families took up way too much space or took way too much time. Yes, I am talking about those families that think there’s no one around them and that no one else has things to do so they can just take their sweet time while blocking people.

Guarded

I found the need to guard various areas of the festival annoying. Like, I wasn’t even allowed to go through a certain street to get to my Metrolink shuttle. It’s one thing if I was a car but as a human, trying to get to point B, what the F? Technically, if I lied and said I needed to get to the parking lot, I would have been granted access but it’s not really me to play like that. It sucks because I ended up having to walk further than necessary and had to walk through a rather poorly lit area. Not cool whatsoever.

Lines

I managed to get into the Mission Inn from a line that wasn’t supposed to exist, I believe. Because of this, I got to see the inn’s Christmas tree and some lights.

I say some because I wasn’t in the official line to see all of the lights. By the time I figured this out, I was annoyed and decided to not get into a line again. So, I am clueless as to how amazing the other lights were. They were probably amazing, but whatever.

With that said, they really should implement a better system for people to see the lights. A system where it’s more obvious of where to line up would be good. I also feel it would be better for the lines to have traffic going both ways as oppose to one way only. That way, people could view the lights coming into the mission as well as leaving the mission. Meh.

Food

At one point, I got super hungry and ended up going for a tamale. Big mistake because it was $4.50, small and quite bland. I definitely have had better tamales elsewhere and at a cheaper price, too!

If any of you are thinking of trying tamales from Barrett’s Lemonade, don’t.

Honestly, I wished I went for Chinese food instead.

Me, me and me

Talking about tamales, this hungry girl was about to get her grub on only to be interrupted by someone that wanted me to take a photo for them. Did you really not see or care that I was about to eat? A decent person would find someone else to bother. To make matters worse, I never received a thank you and I caught the phone’s owner looking unsatisfied at the photo that was taken.

In general, I like to think I take decent photos but if you want pro level photos, hire someone.

People like this are so entitled that it sickens me. (Also, why would you ask a stranger to take a photo for you via your social media app?)

So,would I go to this event again? I think not. Once is enough. I feel that it is a good event for families to go to, though. It’s just not an event I found enjoyable after 1.5 hours had passed. Also, the merry go round and ferris wheel were all just mediocre looking to me.

I’m glad to have at least run into cool wall art and some Christmas tree contest while I was there, though.