After a wonderful Wolfpack Welcome Week full of events and activities to kick off the beginning of the 2018-19 academic year, NC State wrapped up its first week of classes with a festival that took over Hillsborough Street from Dan Allen Drive all the way down to the Belltower: Packapalooza.

This year marked the seventh annual Packapalooza, the first of which was held back in 2012. Over 90,000 people attended this year’s event, with students from NC State along with alumni and families from the Raleigh community coming to Hillsborough Street to enjoy a day of food, fun and music.

Kennedy Fowle, a third-year studying social work, attended Packapalooza this past Saturday.

“I’ve known about [Packapalooza] for about two years now,” Fowle said. “My friend came to it her freshman year and I was a transfer student so she told me about it. It’s nice to look around and see all the connections to campus.”

Though the events began at 2 p.m, setup for Packapalooza began early in the morning, with volunteers coming as early as 5:30 a.m. to help prepare for the festivities. Cathi Dunnagan, a lead instructional designer for DELTA and a member of the Packapalooza planning team, helped to organize and coordinate with the volunteers present at the event.

“Our volunteers came to do the setup early in the morning,” Dunnagan said. “They were up here at 5:30 a.m. to help set up tents, tables and chairs, as well as to help manage traffic while we worked to get the street ready.”

Once attendees arrived at Hillsborough Street, they were presented with a wide variety of booths and vendors to stop at. According to Justine Hollingshead, chief of staff and assistant vice chancellor of the NC State Division of Academic and Student Affairs and Packapalooza planning team co-chair, around 332 different vendors were present at this year’s event. This number included 106 student organizations, as well as a multitude of NC State’s departments, non-profit charities, and businesses.

The event also sported three stages: the main stage at the Belltower, a smaller stage by D.H. Hill Library and a Coca-Cola stage midway between the two. The D.H. Hill and Coca-Cola stages featured performances throughout the day, while the Belltower stage hosted a series of acts later in the evening, including this year’s musical headliner Parmalee. 

Attendees were also able to stop by a variety of vendors for food such as fried treats, snow cones and smoothies served in pineapples.

Kayleen Smith, a second-year studying chemistry, was also at Packapalooza.

“It’s hot, but it has also been a lot of fun,” Smith said. “There are lots of cool vendors and food stalls to go to.”

The booths offered a variety of activities and games, where success would let attendees earn a variety of free items as prizes ranging from pens and bags to Frisbees and T-shirts. Prize wheels were common among these booths, where a spin of chance would determine what prize the spinner would receive, though other games such as cornhole were also present to give attendees a challenge.

Coit Weaver, a second-year studying aerospace engineering, commented on the activities at Packapalooza.

“[Packapalooza] is pretty fun,” Weaver said. “It’s always a good time and a good way to start off the year. The free T-shirts are also pretty cool.”

The evening wrapped up with a performance by Parmalee, a country music group whose re-released single “Carolina” went platinum in 2013, with their major label debut album making it to the Billboard U.S. Top Country Albums top 10 shortly after.

Sarah Brown, a second-year studying science education, planned to attend the evening Parmalee concert.

“I think it’s great,” Brown said. “It’s nice to have a free concert since they can be so expensive and you can get your friends together and go have fun.”

As the concert came to a close, attendees were able to watch a fireworks show by the Belltower, marking the end of this year’s Packapalooza.

Hollingshead said that Packapalooza 2018 went well, and that the conditions for the day were perfect overall.

“Today was a picture-perfect day,” Hollingshead said. “Setup went smoothly, the weather was good, everything was perfect. People were streaming in by the hundreds, and we were busy all day. This was probably our best event, by numbers.”

Now that Packapalooza has concluded for the year, individuals hoping to attend future iterations of the event must now wait to find out what sort of vendors, activities and performances await them at next year’s event.