Discuss “What’s in a theme?”

Carnival’s most attention-grabbing element, the one hardest to ignore, is Midway. Midway triggers all the senses: There’s the smell of the traditional carnival foods (cotton candy and funnel cake, yum), the sound of side-tent bands and screams from spinning Carnival-goers on rides, and, of course, the sight of the booths. These big, bright, hard-to-miss structures adorn Morewood’s parking lot for three full days, all the while competing for a place in booth history, but they’d be nothing without the cohesion provided by the yearly Carnival theme.

Each year, the Carnival theme sets standards that ultimately manifest themselves only in a logo and the booths, but that’s no small feat when some of the most talked-about Carnival memories...