An estimated 25,000 people participated in Riverfest 2005, festival organizers said this morning.

“We believe Riverfest is one of the biggest successes in many, many years,” said Sam Treubel, board president for the 18th annual edition of the community party. “Between the arts and crafts festival and all the entertainment, we were very pleased with the turnout.

“We broke Riverfest records this year,” she said.

Treubel said 20,000 tickets were sold for Friday and Saturday night activities and an estimated 5,000 people were at the free arts and crafts festival during the day Saturday.

The previous record for the two-day street party was about 17,000.

The total attendance for night activities this year included presale tickets. About 10 times more tickets were sold before the festival than in previous years, said Alice Hebler, whose Paper Plus in downtown served as one of the outlets.

“We had several thousand presale tickets, which all sold out,” Treubel said.

Late Saturday night, organizers were predicting this year’s attendance would match previous years, but the crowd kept growing and tickets were counted Sunday and this morning.

After all of the tickets were sold at Paper Plus, Toot’s Grocery, Trustmark Bank’s main branch and Vicksburg Factory Outlets, about 1,000 more were printed and all those sold, too,Treubel said.

More people strolled the streets for the events Saturday morning, which included children’s activities from Veto to China streets and the coinciding Vicksburg Arts and Crafts Festival that took up Washington Street from China to Jackson streets.

Because no tickets were required for daytime events, officials were unable to count how many people filled the streets for the arts and crafts festival.

“There were thousands and thousands of people (at the arts and crafts festival),” Treubel said.

“In the years that I’ve been here, I know this is the biggest – by far,” said Main Street director Rosalie Theobald.

The Riverfest board of directors will meet in two months to start planning Riverfest 2006, and Treubel said they hope to pick up more sponsors for next year.

The success of this year “gives an opportunity for sponsors to be thinking about next year,” she said. “If they like what they saw, they can get on board.”

Riverfest was begun under the auspices of the Chamber of Commerce and evolved to the point where it has its own board of volunteers. Income is from sponsors, ticket sales, booth rentals and other sources. Major expenses are professional performers, gates, security and rentals of everything from stages to cleanup. Each year, the board tries to have enough income to pay advance costs of the next year’s event.

Treubel said the board also relies on the community to comment on past festivals so they can take certain questions and concerns into account when planning.

“Any feedback the community can give us on changes they want to see, comments or questions they have, helps us make it better” Treubel said. “We’ve hit an area where we’ve tried to, of course, expand. As long as you have community support and opinions, it’s only going to get better and better.”