Cape May MAC — Attraction in Cape May

I want to talk to Cape May MAC a little bit about the Candlelight Home Tour last night 12-10-22. I fully appreciate that it's tough getting cooperation from the homeowners, who are rapidly becoming corporate hotel holding entities rather than families with long histories of caring for Cape May. This was quite evident in the minimal effort that a couple of the homes put into this event.

I want to commend the Kiwanis Club for the cookies, cider and hot chocolate. They were actually happy to see us. The Queen Victoria made a nice effort as well, although the interior tour was a bit short.

The lengthy wait in the long of people for each house stretching down block that was rewarded with a token effort at best was disappointing.

Cape May can be lovely this time of year. As someone who has been, for decades, a regular visitor to this wonderful town can attest, the replacement of the family home pride for corporate cost management is now all too evident.

These are headwinds that I don't think the fine people at Cape May MAC can do much about. What I would suggest if possible is to vet the facilities that are included in these tours to see if they really intend to live up to the spirit of a candlelight House Tours. More than a few didn't. I guess they just saw it as a marketing event at our expense.

If the quality of the event is being hindered by the disinterest of the current corporate owners, maybe a change is needed for 2023? Something to...

My husband and I attended MAC Victorian Weekend 2014. As much as we love Cape May, the Victorian Weekend was a great disappointment for our first and probably our last.The events listed under the "Victorian Weekend" were, for the most part, events that we could do any other time of the year and not specifically directed to anything celebrating Victorian Weekend in a town considered to be synonymous with the Victorian period, We went on tours listed and found ourselves the only dressed in support of the weekend. We have attended small town events with more people dressed in celebratory attire. With not sure what to expect, our impression was that we would see loads of folks like us momentarily stepping back in time with events to celebrate a time-gone-by era in opulent fashion. Unfortunately, we maybe saw a handful of people dressed basically doing what we did...walk around town for the weekend. Even residents of Cape May inquired "what was going on" and "why we were dressed like that". Perhaps a complimentary "meet and greet" or "icebreaker" on the part of MAC for those dressing up in Victorian to show appreciation for support to their (MAC) event in lieu of the discontinued Victorian Ball could...

We came to Cape May to do the Candlelight Home Tour on12-17-22. I was very disappointed in the tour. The ticket pick up the morning of our tour was very unorganized. There was no signage for ticket pick up when we got to the Emlen Physick Estate. The women working the ticket booth did not even know if there was a trolley stop at the Emlen Physick Estate. We left there with a useless map and no answers to our questions. Finding the houses was difficult as the signs were not very visible in the dark. However, a line of people down the block told you that a house was near. The lines were ridiculously long, with people trying to enter and leave through the same door. I do not believe anyone from the MAC walked the homes to see that this was going to be an issue. Nor do I think the MAC vetted the homes as most of them were minimally decorated with a tree, pillow or maybe a Santa. It was obvious that the majority of the homes were using this as a marketing event which infuriated me. One home even took advantage of our captured attention to try and sell us a book. I would NOT recommend attending this. I expected it to be a magical and charming experience and boy was I...