Phineas Phoggettes dancers do The Cupid Shuffle: The Phineas Phoggettes dancers rehearse and give a lesson on the Cupid Shuffle they will perform during the Marching Madness Parade in downtown Pensacola.
Seville Quarter's Phineas Phoggettes do the "Cupid Shuffle." / Phil Bailey/GoPensacola.com
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This year, Pensacola adds a new parade to Mardi Gras season, but this one is a bit different than anything we’ve seen in Pensacola.
The Pensacola Mardi Gras Marching Madness will feature krewes, floats, beads and revelry, of course, but add to those traditional good times a marching band competition and an attempt at getting Pensacola into the Guinness World Records.
The parade starts rolling at 2 p.m. down the typical downtown Pensacola parade route. But interspersed among those crazy krewes will be about 10 marching bands from around the region. When each band reaches the intersection of Garden Street and Palafox Place, the parade will pause for the band to put on a show. Each band is competing before professional marching band adjudicators, who will choose the best performance of the day.
Oh, and there’s one other big pause in the parade. Sometime between 3 and 4 p.m., the parade will pause so that everyone in the parade or watching along the parade route can do the “Cupid Shuffle,” the line-dance craze popularized by the song of the same name. The goal is to have more than 17,500 people line-dancing together, breaking the record for the world’s largest line dance. This also will be centered at Palafox and Garden, but organizers hope it will take up the entire parade route.
Those looking for a view of all the contests and dancing will want to be sure to arrive downtown early, as the intersection will likely be quickly be filled with eager spectators — maybe even more than a typical Pensacola parade.
And after the parade, don’t miss the finals of the Miss Mardi Gras Bikini Contest at Helen Back Again, upstairs at 22 Palafox Place. The queen of Mardi Gras will be crowned on Saturday night.
