{"id":9552,"date":"2021-04-07T19:05:26","date_gmt":"2021-04-07T23:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=9552"},"modified":"2021-04-07T19:05:38","modified_gmt":"2021-04-07T23:05:38","slug":"sun-n-fun-expecting-record-crowds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2021\/04\/07\/sun-n-fun-expecting-record-crowds\/","title":{"rendered":"Sun \u2019n Fun Expecting Record Crowds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The news came as a big surprise even to the event organizers, who have now dropped their limit on daily attendance.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slated to get underway in a matter of days, the Sun \u2019n Fun Fly-In, which was canceled last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, is projected to have the highest number of attendees in recent event history. This, according to Sun \u2019n Fun chairman John \u201cLites\u201d Leenhouts, who was quoted by local paper\u00a0The Lakeland Ledger<\/em>\u00a0as saying, \u201cWe never saw it coming,\u201d he said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t expect this to happen.\u201d In fact, he told\u00a0The Ledger, organizers were anticipating a far smaller-than-normal crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The reason for the bullish projection is that ticket sales, Leenhouts said, are running \u201c25 to 30% higher than the expo\u2019s best year.\u201d In terms of numbers, he didn\u2019t say how many attendees that would come to, but the show has, without explanation, dropped the cap on daily attendance, which would have limited admissions to 30,000 per day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leenhouts said he had been expecting the event\u2019s turnout to be lower than normal because of the ongoing COVID pandemic. Now the show is upping its orders for portable restrooms, and it\u2019s trying to lease additional land adjacent to Sun \u2019n Fun for additional airplane parking and overflow camping (See Sun \u2018N Fun COVID-19 Policy<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pandemic has hit Florida especially hard, with more than two million cases over the past year and around 34,000 deaths. In Polk County, which is home to Lakeland\u2014the site of the Sun \u2019n Fun event\u2014of the roughly 60,000 residents, there have been more than 1,200 deaths and nearly 5,000 hospitalizations during that same time period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One big thing that has changed is the level of vaccinations nationwide. In Florida, residents have gotten more than six million shots, with around 3.7 million Florida residents having been fully vaccinated. The state has a population of around 21.5 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because it is an event of national stature, Sun \u2019n Fun attracts crowds from around the country, and from a number of foreign countries, as well. But, because it won\u2019t require proof of vaccination\u2014nor will it be asking or checking\u2014to attend, there will be no way for the organizers to know what percentage of its attendees are vaccinated or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sun \u2018n Fun organizers had been planning to limit attendance but in the wake of a record surge in ticket buying, it has dropped those measures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the positive side, vaccinations nationwide are growing at a rapid pace, with nearly three million Americans getting a shot of one of the three approved COVID-19 vaccines every day. And because older people have been prioritized in the distribution scheme and because aviation\u2019s demographic is older than that of the general population, there could be a high percentage of vaccinated attendees. We will likely never know. This calculus is complicated by the fact that there is a large and committed segment of the American population that is declining to get vaccinated, citing political and philosophical differences with the federal government-guided program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sun \u2019n Fun says that it will be doubling down on its safety measures, which will include a recommendation to wear masks throughout the grounds, a requirement to mask up to enter the exhibition halls, along with aggressive sanitation efforts and reminders to attendees to practice safe social distancing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The news came as a big surprise even to the event organizers, who have now dropped their limit on daily attendance. Slated to get underway in a matter of days,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}