{"id":26452,"date":"2019-12-16T20:26:27","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T20:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/?p=26452"},"modified":"2019-12-16T20:26:27","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T20:26:27","slug":"a-california-classic-cruise-of-lights-in-huntington-harbour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/a-california-classic-cruise-of-lights-in-huntington-harbour\/","title":{"rendered":"A California Classic, Cruise of Lights in Huntington Harbour"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/images\/cruzlitz.jpg\" alt=\"img\" width=\"650\" height=\"339\" \/><\/p>\n<p>While place such as Oxnard&#8217;s Historic District offers a free walking or driving tour to see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/christmas\/oxnard-home-lights.html\">residential lights<\/a>, Mission Inn hosts an annual, free <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/christmas\/riverside-mission-inn-lights.html\">5 million lights attraction<\/a> which is the owners&#8217; gift to the public, and Altadena proudly touts its delightful <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/christmas\/trees\/altadena-christmas-tree-lane.html\">Christmas Tree Lane<\/a> decorated by community volunteers for the holiday season, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/christmas\/boat-parades\/huntington-harbour-cruise-of-lights.html\">Huntington Beach&#8217;s Cruise of Lights<\/a>\u00a0(shown in photos) charges a fee&#8211;and with good reason.<\/p>\n<p>Like all the other lights displays mentioned, Cruise of Lights on the waterways of Huntington Harbour is 100% produced by volunteers and relies on the residents of the Harbour to decorate their waterfront homes to make the 57th annual display a great success. As the biggest annual fundraiser of the Huntington Harbour Philharmonic, a non-profit group that supports music programs in schools, the price of admission to ride on a yacht or boat and enjoy a 45 minute narrated tour of decorated homes is a win-win. The public gets to see something they might otherwise miss and in so doing, their purchases bring the gift of music to hundreds of thousands of school kids.<\/p>\n<p>Having volunteered, myself, to supply photos and publicity for this worthy event, I have been amazed at the go-getters who make this happen each year. If you want to check out this worthy group, see cruiseoflights.org<\/p>\n<h2>Cruise of Lights Overcomes Challenges<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Legal issues: One year they solved insurance issues in use of privately-operated boats for the public to ride.<\/li>\n<li>Weather: Each and every year they cope with weather conditions that can affect attendance.<\/li>\n<li>Competition: Newport Beach&#8217;s Boat Parade is held around the same time. While not necessarily competing, some people do opt to attend just one of these two events.<\/li>\n<li>Volunteers: Some dedicated volunteers have come and gone (even passed away, sadly.) Maintaining a base of volunteers is always a challenge.<\/li>\n<li>Education: It&#8217;s a constant effort to educate Huntington Harbour newcomers about the event and rally them to participate. Themes typically tied to music engage all religions and faiths.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While place such as Oxnard&#8217;s Historic District offers a free walking or driving tour to see residential lights, Mission Inn hosts an annual, free 5 million lights attraction which is the owners&#8217; gift to the public, and Altadena proudly touts its delightful Christmas Tree Lane decorated by community volunteers for the holiday season, Huntington Beach&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26452"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26453,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26452\/revisions\/26453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}