It’s my 2nd year of being a part of Pan Pacific’s amazing Christmas Wish Breakfast! And I recruited some of my influencer friends to help celebrate and spread the word!
Every year, the Pan Pacific holds its epic toy drive – one of the largest in Canada. Vancouverites are invited to come down and donate a new, unwrapped toy to the Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau, in order to make Christmas special for families in need. As a thank you, the hotel provides a complimentary, hot buffet breakfast on the house. the event has been going strong – it’s now in its 29th year!
My influencers and I stayed over at the hotel because of the insanely early call time of 530am (!) Even though it was hella early, it was fun for all of us to see all the generous donations being dropped off and the City of Vancouver fire department volunteers stacking the toys into what would become a two-story high Christmas “tree.”
The Good Noise Gospel Choir, Langley Ukelele and Goh Ballet provided the entertainment, while Global BC and Rock 101 were broadcasting live on-site. New this year! My friend Sam helped us to set up a couple of cool custom Snapchat filters – just for the occasion.
This year’s event clobbered last year’s event, setting a new record. Here’s the final numbers:
Over 5,000 Vancouverites dropped off 22+ tonnes of toys, 2,000 bikes and $21,000 in cash donations, while our culinary team cooked up 18,000 eggs, 12,000 sausages, 450 pounds of hashbrowns, 6,000 croissants and 3,000 muffins for the hungry crowd. All in the span of three hours!
Some pics:
See the complete 360 pano of us (my media table) here, courtesy of John Biehler.
At 9am, the firefighters took down and carted away the 2 story tree of toys – all in about 20 mins. I gobbled down my second breakfast and then went to my room, jumped into bed to get a snooze in before noon check-out!
What a great way to kick of the holiday season by helping to take care of the thousands of families who wouldn’t otherwise be able to celebrate Christmas.
For an archive of all the tweets, find them on my Twitter moments. For a gallery of all the Instagrams, view them on Storify. View more photos of the event on my Flickr album.
Thank you to my influencer friends and to everyone who came out to support Christmas Wish Breakfast. See everybody next year!
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