Bellevue, Washington Featured Videos, 22 Nov 2017

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From YouTube: Lake to Lake 2017 Holiday Edition

Description

On the latest Lake to Lake television show, see a sneak preview of some great holiday fun with this year’s Bellevue Magic Season, including:

• Garden d’Lights at the Bellevue Botanical Garden;
• The Magic Season Ice Arena;
• Snowflake Lane; and
• other great events of the season!

Lake to Lake is produced by Bellevue Television (BTV). Programming airs on BTV Channel 21 and on the Bellevue Television You Tube channel. For more information, email btv@bellevuewa.gov

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Hello and welcome to Lake to Lake a show about our beautiful city of Bellevue I'm, your host Robin Steele, we're coming to you from the beautiful garden delights, show at the Bellevue Botanical Garden and we're celebrating some wonderful holiday traditions. It's a busy time of year, but today we're taking you behind the scenes to show you some wonderful holiday events that you definitely won't want to miss, including the Bellevue magic season, Ice, Arena, snowflake, lane garden, delights and other great holiday activities.

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First, here's Patrick Bannon of the Bellevue downtown association, with an overview of the 21st annual Bellevue magic season.

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The Bellevue magic season celebrating its 21st year, is an opportunity to invite the entire community to downtown Bellevue to celebrate the holiday season. What I love most about Bellevue magic season is the variety there is opportunity for people to have fun of all ages.

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There's ice skating in the downtown park, there's snowflake Lane every night at the Bellevue collection, the garden at the garden delights at the Bellevue Botanical Garden is a wonder to behold, and one of the more recent and now beloved traditions of the Bellevue Magic season are the kids quest, Children's Museum, gingerbread building workshops at the Hyatt Regency here in downtown Bellevue.

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Another great tradition of the Bellevue Magic season are the holiday performances at Maiden, Bower, Center Theater. We invite you, your friends and your family to come to downtown Bellevue and enjoy the best of the holiday season.

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Next Patrick gives us a closer look at the magic season, Ice Arena at the newly renovated downtown park. The.

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Bellevue magic season, Ice Arena, presented by the Alaska Airlines Visa Signature Card, runs from the day after Thanksgiving November 24th every day through January 15th. This is the 21st year for the Ice Arena here in downtown Bellevue and what's exciting about that, is that it's now spanned at least two generations. So it's a really special opportunity to bring the community together around a holiday event that we really can enjoy year-round, so we're really happy to produce it and present it to the Bellevue community during the magic season.

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Another fun fact about this year's Bellevue Magic season. The Ice Arena, is that it's over 9,000 square feet. It's 25% larger than prior year's ice arenas and we're so fortunate to have great partners who help us produce this event, including the city of Bellevue and our sponsors, including Alaska, Airlines and Bank of America.

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The setup for the Ice Arena starts in early November and so construction of the Ice Arena the platform, making the ice, making sure that the facility is ready for patrons, really takes the entire month of November and we're ready to open the day after Thanksgiving. One of the great benefits of the Ice Arena is that is covered for all-weather skating. It's still an outdoor experience, that's open to the fresh air but covered for rain covered for snow.

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If we might happen to have snow and again with the park being newly renovated, the parking configuration is even more convenient that it was before, or we always encourage people to try, transit, take transit for all of your holiday shopping and holiday activities.

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Another great event of the season is snowflake lane Jennifer Levitt of Kemper development tells us all about this wonderful holiday tradition, and she explains how a new feature is designed to make this year's event more magical than ever.

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Simply clean I like to look at it as a gift to the community from the kemper development company, because it is this really fun. Family-Friendly nightly show that we do for 30 nights. That is complementary to the public, and it really is this combination of entertainment, lights, music, wonderful, characters that interact with the kids and this year. It is a parade, so the creation of snowflake Lane doesn't start one month out. It starts about a year out as soon as we're finished, with one snowflake Lane we're already talking about what it's going to take.

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The real sidewalk experience starts usually about a month and a half before the event. People start. We have things on rooftops. We bring things in with major lifts and cranes to get onto the balconies, because we have snow machines, we have lights and then, of course, there's all the backstage things going on with Greg Thompson productions. They create all the characters they work with all the high school students and the college students to create the magic that comes out on the street.

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So in the past this has been a show that took place on the street, but you, if you were standing on the sidewalk or in red in the street, you'd see kind of one piece of the show, and what we really wanted to do, as it's become more popular, is make sure that every location on the sidewalk is a great view and really let everybody see all parts of the show.

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So we have moved from sort of a static street show to an actual parade, and so what we've done is we've taken the route and extended it so it'll actually run between North East State, the North East Fourth Street along Bellevue way. So now it's an actual moving parade. So there's 16 new floats that you'll see so they'll be brand new for people and we have all the same favorite characters. You'll see the dancing toy drummers.

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We have a new group of dancers called the snow flurries and, of course the very favorite jingle bells will be there and Santa actually arrives every night too. So he will be on a float every night. So it's it starts at 7:00. Every night promptly at 7:00, but you don't want to get here at 5 minutes to 7:00. You need to plan ahead. This is a very popular event.

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One of the favorite parts about snowflake playing for me is really the snowfall and, of course it's helped. Snowflake Lane gets a psychotic name. So one of the things that we started 13 years ago was every night at snows. Now it takes 50 snow machines to make that happen when it starts to come down. It's such a surprise. Even what happens every night? It's still a favorite part of the show so magical.

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As I mentioned at the top of the show, we're coming to you from the Bellevue Botanical Garden, where you can see one of the most spectacular light shows around next Nancy cartas. The garden manager explains how this whole light show is made possible through the amazing efforts of volunteers.

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Garden delights has been a beloved community event since 1994 and basically we turn the bell to Botanical Garden into a winter wonderland with over 500,000 lights. So we take the garden, that's gone to sleep and we bring it back to life in lights. The Bellevue, Botanical, Garden, Society volunteers, create the lights, install the lights, and then they staff the event for 36 nights.

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So there's a core group of 30 volunteers and they begin work in March, actually planning the next year's garden delights, so they're, repairing lights and coming up with brand new ideas for new flowers and plants and critters, and they mate every week, all year long and then all of the lights are installed and we start recruiting volunteers to help with greeters and event, support and cashiers and all the other things that are needed to make this a success.

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So that's about another hundred volunteers and they spend about nine thousand hours throughout the year, preparing for garden delights and they do it because they love it and they want to give this gift to. The community of this year's show is different because we have an entirely new route and it replaces the accessibility route that we've had in previous years.

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Now we just have one loop for everyone to follow, so there are all kinds of plants and flowers and the volunteers really try to make those botanically correct by the way we've even made accession tags for them, like we've done for our real plants and so they're kind of a curated collection. Just like our real plants are. There are vegetables, there's a tropical section.

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There are Nick Washington natives, also all different kinds of plants and flowers and and creatures I always try to volunteer a couple of nights as well, because I like to see how things are laid out and how things are going and I always listen in and people are so thrilled to be here and so happy, and just really for bringing joy to people and.

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Now here are some more great holiday events: November 29th through December, 2nd, come to the hilltop holiday craft, show featuring handcrafted items from over 60 selected Northwest crafters at Northwest, Art Center for more information, email, NWACC at Bellevue, W a.gov, or call for two five, four: five: two four one: zero six December 3rd from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. cozy up to a beach fire sing some carols and see the Christmas ship festival presented by Argosy cruises from onshore at New, Castle, Beach Park.

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The event is free and free registration is not required for more information, email, NWACC at bellevue, w8 gov or call 425 four five, two four one: zero six December 8th through the 17th see the timeless classic Miracle on 34th Street at the Bellevue youth theatre, the show is suitable for all ages and advance tickets are 12 to 15 dollars for tickets and more information, email be whitey at Bellevue, W a.gov or call 425 for five. Two seven one: five: five December 31st from 10:30 a.m.

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to 12:00 noon, come to the New Year's hike at Lewis, Creek Park join a park ranger on a family-friendly, one-mile hike for all ages and reflect on the passage of time in nature. The cost is free and pre-registration is not required for more information. Call four, two five four five, two four one: nine five and of course enjoy the many events of Bellevue's magic season. November 25th through December 31st nightly from 4:30 to 9:00 p.m. stroll through the beautiful garden delights display at the Bellevue Botanical Garden admission is $5 November 24th through December 24th.

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Don't miss snowflake lane at the Bellevue collection, the spectacular Holiday Show and parade nightly at 7 p.m. along Bellevue Way November 24th 2017 through January 15th 2018 enjoy the magic season. Ice Arena presented by Alaska Airlines visa signature card in Bellevue, downtown park, admission is $14 and the ice rink is open daily and the theater at Maiden Bower Center enjoy a month of special holiday, music and dramatic productions by regional and local performance groups for complete Bellevue Magic season schedules and more information visit Bellevue downtown comm.

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Thank you for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed our show featuring some of the reasons Bellevue as the city, where you want to be. If you have feedback or questions for us, please email us anytime at bee TV at Bellevue, W a.gov also be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with our latest video content. I'm Robin Steele from all of us at Bellevue television, happy holidays and thanks for watching Lake to Lake.

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