November 14, 2022 - The Brown Palace Champaign Cascade


We finally made it! This is a really neat event that the Brown Palace Hotel puts on every year. It’s a charity event, this year the Make-A-Wish Foundation. They build the cascade “tree” out of 5,000 champagne flutes! Then the guest of honor rides up to the top of it in a Genie Lift and pours just two bottles of champagne. Actually filling the 5,000 glasses wouldn’t be possible, they’re not strong enough to support that much weight.


We also made reservations for brunch, since we didn’t really know how it would work. It turns out that if you’ve got tickets for the best view in the hotel, the buffet is even better than the Sunday brunch.

When I got the Brown Palace’s email, I immediately went to the Eventbrite website and snagged the tickets. It sells out fast!

Here’s the chandelier and the upper floors. We were on the 2nd floor. The third floor and up is free, but the views aren’t very good and no buffet.

The champagne flute tree at the start.

The first major event - lighting the chandelier! One of the Make-A-Wish kids gets to throw the switch.

The main event! 1st the bottles have to be opened, then the guest of honor goes up the Genie lift and pours.