People reserved their space to watch the 68th Candy Cane Lane Parade in Downtown Visalia hours before it started Monday. This year's theme was "Twelve Days of Christmas" and to accommodate the tens of thousands of people who attended, organizers made the parade two blocks longer. Instead of beginning at Santa Fe the parade started two blocks East on Liberty and Main Streets.
"...on good weather, we got that last year, looks like we are going to get that again this year so we hope there is more space for people to enjoy the parade," Visalia Host Lions Eric Frost said.
Fouty more trees along Visalia's Main Street were lit up this year. Plus the Downtown Visalia property owners have raised more than $20,000 to update the electrical outlets on street lights so the Candy Cane Lane lights don't have to be plugged into Main Street's store
"This year we've actually wired the street lights so we're able to wire them directly to the street lights the existing system was actually put in in 1938 and so it's a very old system and it could not run the candy cane lane lights any longer," Myron Sheklian with the Downtown Proeprty Owners Association said.
This year there are 15,000 more Christmas lights up. Monday's parade started at 7 p.m.