For the first time since 2011, Halloween in Ybor City will include a Guavaween parade.

  • Guavaween parade back for first time since 2011
  • Event planners say new Halloween parade will be tamer event
  • Party goers can march down 7th Ave in Ybor City with the Pumpkin King
  • Changes include no open containers along parade route

But after some trouble with the parade in the past, this year's celebration is promising a fun but tamer party. 

Event planners say the annual Tampa Halloween celebration's parade had got out of hand by 2011 with open containers and behavior that got too rowdy. 

With the parade returning after a five-year hiatus, Mathieu Stanoch with Historic Holiday Spirit said the answer was to get back to the event's roots. 

"Everybody asks, who is the Pumpkin King?  Who's the Pumpkin King?" Stanoch said. "We're taking it back to the beginning of the original Mama Guava Stumble.  

"It was basically a theatrical costume stumble down 7th Avenue, not in the streets, it was on the sidewalks here in Ybor City, so what we're doing is we're giving everybody in Tampa a chance to be in this unique parade." 

Saturday's 31st Guavaween will take place on 7th Avenue and 14th Street in Ybor. 

There will be costumes, live music, food and the new March of the Pumpkin King Halloween Parade down 7th Avenue.

But the bawdy behavior that came to mark the Guavaween parade won't be tolerated, Stanoch said.

"It just really didn't bring the quality of people that Guavaween was known for back in the day," he said. "Which was the costumes, the drama teachers, the theatricalness of the parade."

Another new feature is that eventgoers can march with the Pumpkin King down 7th Avenue to the Guavaween Costume Zone, which officials say will become a new tradition.