You Can Zipline Across Millennium Park For Free This Weekend
By Mae Rice in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 9, 2016 6:39PM
We can all zipline across Millennium Park for free this weekend, courtesy of marketers who think offering rides on a 200-foot zipline (and letting Chicagoans take selfies with a baby alligator?) will make the entire city vacation en masse in Kissimmee, Florida.
Yes. This is the real marketing extravaganza, called “Escape Cold. Warm Your Heart,” from Experience Kissimmee. It will run in the park from Feb. 13 through Feb. 15, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, and feature a zipline that starts on a three-story platform and slopes down into a “warming tent.”
In this tent, attendees can drink free hot chocolate and shop “Kissimmee branded cold weather gear,” which is very highly sought after in an alternate universe.
Attendees will also get to “interact with” and take photos with a baby alligator from Gatorland—which, it should maybe be noted, is a zoo-slash-amusement-park that is in Orlando, not in Kissimmee.
“For this campaign, we decided to bring some of the warm-weather fun to our freezing friends here in Chicago,” DT Minich, president and CEO of Experience Kissimme, said in a statement by way of rationale.
Sure! Okay. I mean, to be fair to these peppy marketers, I didn’t know there was a city called Kissimmee until today? There’s also a nice charity element to this thing: Visitors can donate gently-used winter coats at the festivities, and the team will give the coats to Chicagoans in need.