- Distance wise the procession route is just over 7 miles long, and the carnival will take more than 2 hours to pass any one viewing point.
- Over 1,000,000 individual lights will illuminate the skyline as the carts meander around the streets of Bridgwater.
- Over 12 Megawatts of electricity will power the 45 carnival carts taking part in this year’s carnival procession.
- Over 2,000 people are involved with the 125 entries in this year’s event.
- 1,600 traffic cones, 200 road traffic signs, 170 barriers, and 34 traffic marshals will be facilitating the 31 closed roads. The equipment will be set out by the carnival committee’s road traffic team in readiness for the 2016 carnival, with the first being laid out at 06:30 hours on carnival day, and the last collected at 03:30 hours the following morning. 75 radios will be in operation during the event.
- 350 collectors will be on the streets on carnival night shaking their 600 collection buckets for 15 different charities. They are expected to collect over 500,000 coins.
- This year Bridgwater Guy Fawkes Carnival has 81 friends of carnival (formerly patrons). For more information visit bridgwatercarnival.org.uk/associates/friends.
- All of the 2,445 grandstand seats were sold 5 weeks prior to the big day.
- 53 trade stands will line the procession route on carnival night.
- 175 people are expected to take part in this year’s squibbing display, 15 minutes after the procession has finished. The squibs are 300mm long by 200mm in circumference and hold approximately 1lb of gunpowder. 2016 marks exactly 300 years since the first recorded evidence of squibbing in Bridgwater back in 1716.
- 37 cups and trophies are awarded on carnival night by our 76 Before the results are announced on the evening, 4,802 separate judging scores will need to be entered onto laptops to ascertain which entries came where.
- 91 coaches / minibuses will be attending Bridgwater Carnival 2016. This compares to the 70 coaches / minibuses who pre-booked for Bridgwater Carnival 2015, and the 52 who booked for Bridgwater Carnival 2014.
- 50,000 publicity flyers have been sent to motorway service stations, event attractions and tourist information centres throughout the country.
- 4,405 people like the official Bridgwater Guy Fawkes Carnival Facebook page.
- 3,988 people follow Bridgwater Carnival’s official Twitter account.
- In the last 12 months, our official website (bridgwatercarnival.org.uk), has received 144,735 hits, including 936 from computer users living in America, 367 from Germany, 263 from France, 236 from Spain, 205 from Canada and 196 from Australia.
- 50 companies and organisations are official sponsors of Bridgwater Carnival 2016.
- The 800 kVA generator used to power Globe CC’s 2016 entry Wild uses approximately 350 litres of diesel every carnival. The cart will drain around 2,200 amps – equivalent to boiling 800 kettles simultaneously.
- Over 12 kilometres of electrical cable is on Marketeers CC’s 2016 entry Warp Speed Space Machine. Their cart is powered by a 125 kVA generator and has 5,000 LED chips, which equates to 250,000 individual lights, and can blend 16,000,000 different colours by varying the voltage to each red, green and blue LED.
- Various research projects and studies have concluded that Bridgwater Carnival is worth an estimated £4,000,000 annually to the local economy – £2,000,000 during the weekend of the carnival and a further £2,000,000 from carnival related activities throughout the year.
- The new FREE Bridgwater Carnival app, which is available from Google Play and the App Store, has been downloaded by 607 people.
- 2016 is the 411th anniversary of The Gunpowder Plot.
- This year 18 local schools are taking part in educational activities organised by Bridgwater Guy Fawkes Carnival Committee, which is helping to engage with approximately 1,500 Over 150 children are taking part in the children’s dance parade on carnival day, and 24 decorated carnival masks in and around the town centre have been decorated by some of these schools.
- In the last 5 years Bridgwater Carnival related activities have raised over £117,000 for the official Bridgwater Guy Fawkes Carnival charity and other local supported charities.
- Bridgwater Guy Fawkes Carnival Committee has 81 members.
- 2016 sees the 11th anniversary of the formal unveiling of the carnival squibber statue in the centre of Bridgwater.