Lantern Safari 2005

(warning: graphic-intensive entry. On second thought, by the time you read this, it may be too late =P)

OK, so this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival may not be as nice as last year’s for me. I didn’t have gatherings with friends to celebrate it (while eating yummy mooncakes, hahaha..). At least I still managed to go to Chinese Garden with some friends to see Lantern Safari 2005 (on its 2nd last day! =P).

The event was nice, and it's quite interesting to see what kind of shapes and motion effects the organizers came up with. The theme this year is animals (as the event’s title suggests, haha), which IMHO was a little unfortunate though, because the place ended up being much less colourful compared to the last time I went there. At that time the event was titled Lantern Fun-tasy, and they had mythical and cartoon characters, ranging from Sun Wu Kong from Journey to the West to Disney characters such as Lilo and Stitch). Granted, some animals are very colourful, but once you get to scenes depicting, say, animals on a savannah or steppes, not much can be done with the colours. If the artists want to keep some semblance of realism, anyway.

Speaking of realism, this year the artists apparently chose realism over kid-friendliness, as shown by the two sample pics below =P

One of the best part of the whole thing was, IMHO, the small lake, which had interesting “volcano” with nice-looking dinosaurs. “Noah’s Ark” set was another.



There's also a large Merlion with changing colours, placed near a group of small dragons. Sorry, the Merlion isn't very recognizable in this picture -- it's the one at the center =)

There were also some parts of the garden which featured characters from Chinese mythology and tradition. I hope they add more of these kinds of lanterns next year! Better motion effects would probably be nice too… =)