More fireworks bang offered for July 4 bucks

o An entry fee/pass is required for all adults and children age 13 and older. Children 12 and younger attend for free.

General admission tickets will cost $7 at the gate. That’s why advanced sales, at $5 each, are highly suggested.

To order and print (and to donate) tickets, click here.

Tickets also may be purchased at two visitor centers run by the National Park Service at Fort Vancouver (the replica fort, and the larger center off East Evergreen Boulevard), and at the O.O. Howard House.

Online sales end at midnight July 3.

Ticket gates will be near the usual security checkpoints. There will be “express lines” for those who have tickets.

Cash sales are preferred, but credit/debit cards may be used. There will be ATMs available, but only inside the fenced area.

o Family fun is on parade.

There’s new focus on activities for children, from music to puppet shows to many learning activities. Events begin at noon and run through the afternoon.

Foremost will be a Patriotic Parade, set for 2 p.m.

Children are welcome to join right in, riding brightly painted or bunted wagons. There will be face painting, Uncle Sam hats and July Fourth sunglasses, and each child receives a small American flag.

Adults, fear not: The musical selection will change gears later on, and there’s a beer garden, too.

o Want to see fireworks for free? Volunteers are still needed.

Organizers count on 250 volunteers for the long day of events. As of Wednesday, the Fort Vancouver National Trust was still shy about 100 helpers, Hash said.

Each volunteer gets two entry passes, a complimentary T-shirt and a VIP parking pass.

The Trust has distributed nearly 4,000 general admission tickets to four nonprofit groups: Share, the Boys & Girls Club, the YMCA and Family Resource Centers.

Each is soliciting donors to purchase tickets for low-income families (with the group collecting a portion of the proceeds). Persons in need may directly contact those four groups.

Other local youth and civics groups also are selling tickets.

o VIP treatment is still available.

Prime viewing seats will give spectators a “front row experience” just south of the Pearson Air Museum and close to the fireworks launch point.

Price is $50 for guests age 21 years and older, $25 for guests age 6 to 20 years.

Tickets include a dinner buffet, from 6 to 8 p.m. Purchase of four tickets together includes a parking pass for one vehicle in the prime viewing parking lot, at East Fifth and U streets.

Guests should still bring their own lawn chairs and/or blankets to the event.

Promoters of Fort Vancouver’s resurrected July Fourth fireworks show hope to sell 20,000 tickets for the spectacle, for the first time an admission-only affair.

By Wednesday, online sales approached just 600 tickets.

Not to worry, organizers say. They expect purchases to boom, thanks to a strong marketing push, some nice weather and, above all, the calendar.

“I really do anticipate it to get pretty crazy the last couple of days,” said Kim Hash, director of programs for the Fort Vancouver National Trust, the group running the show.

Hash should know much more about tickets distributed this time next week.

That’s after four nonprofit groups report on nearly 4,000 tickets directed to families who can’t afford the new $5 general admission charge (for age 13 and older).

By then, Hash expects word of the revived show and its entry fee to have saturated the Vancouver-Portland market. (The show was canceled in 2009 after its primary sponsor, fireworks vendor Edward “Dominick” Rinck, pulled out.)

• Comcast will have run at least 300 promotional television ads on several cable channels, each of them donated.

• Portland’s KGW-TV, to again broadcast live the fireworks display, already is pitching the event. There also are local radio spots in rotation.

• Due soon in coffee shops and other small businesses across Clark County: Information cards that urge advance ticket purchase.

Hash predicts plenty more news media coverage as the big day approaches, with emphasis on the entry charge.

To trim costs — from almost $450,000 spent in 2008 to an estimated $365,000 this year — the fireworks will last about 20 minutes, about 10 minutes fewer than in recent years.

Launched from Pearson Field rather than the usual Columbia River floating barge, the display will be more compact and lower to the ground, not reaching much higher than 450 feet.

The blasts will be hard to watch from many favorite vantage points outside the 366-acre Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, such as recreational boats, the Oregon side of the Columbia, hillsides or the Clark College campus, Hash said.

That fact — plus live musical acts, games and historical displays for children, a planned children’s Patriotic Parade and other special exhibits — should lure the tens of thousands of people Vancouver has typically seen, she said.

“The expectation and hope is that the same crowd that we have every year will return,” Hash said.

That would be 50,000 to 60,000 visitors.

Reliable revenue

A huge attraction since it began in 1963, Vancouver’s marquee summer event was canceled last summer, after several years of skirting insolvency.

Vancouver city officials, the National Park Service and the Trust brainstormed a “sustainable” path forward. Contract operators of 14 licensed fireworks stands in Clark County and in Vancouver continue to pay nearly $100,000 total each year. But leaders agreed a more reliable revenue stream was essential.

It was determined to add a modest entry fee, eased by spreading donated tickets to the low-income community.

No longer would the National Park Service object to ticket collections (to be done by nonpark staff just off park property), long cited as a stumbling block.

“Without it, we would not have been able to run the event,” said Elson Strahan, Trust president. “We just simply can’t afford to subsidize it any more.”

The revival cheered many supporters, even if some find old habits hard to break. One woman recently called police to report Boy Scouts outside a Fred Meyer store “were selling fraudulent tickets for a free event,” Hash said.

Advisory sidewalk signs will alert visitors to the new policy. Ticket takers may have some donated passes handy to help unknowing guests without means to pay, Hash said.

Shaking things up

Will the revamped event be worth the money?

Hash believes so. Instead of one large entertainment stage this year, there will be four, with live music, children’s games and other entertainment.

There’s a history focus: Guests may learn to play 19th century parlor games, play croquet in Victorian dress, speak Chinook jargon and more. There will be fashion shows and guided walking tours of Officers Row and the Vancouver Barracks.

“We’ve got some really neat things that I think are going to paint a good, old historic celebration,” Hash said. “We’re really hoping that there’s an earlier influx and that people really do make a day of it.”

As for the 10:05 p.m. fireworks: “It’s going to be a different show, but just as spectacular,” she said.

Rather than a “stovepipe” launch from the river to send a high-flying barrage, Western Display Fireworks, the longtime pyrotechnics designers, will unleash a more varied array.

“It’s more a rectangular show; it won’t go up as high, but it will fill up more of the sky” for paying customers, Hash said.

What’s more, the Pearson Field proximity should send a literal shudder through guests, absent for several years.

“Now, people will get that reverberation,” she said.

Howard Buck: 360-735-4515 or howard.buck@columbian.com.