FRONT ROYAL, Va. (WSET) — Families and the community in Front Royal, Virginia, are excited to welcome King Charles III and Queen Camilla to the town to take part in their America 250 Parade.
As part of their trip to the United States, the Royal Family is set to visit Front Royal on Thursday before heading to Bermuda. ABC13’s Hayden Robertson spent the evening walking around the Historic Front Royal Downtown speaking to people and hearing about their excitement for the royal visit.
“At first it was unbelievable,” longtime Front Royal resident Casey Grady said. “I’m excited that my children are actually gonna get to see a piece of history. I’m excited that we all get to live and be a part of it.
“People have been talking about it all day,” Front Royal resident and business owner Stephanie Myers said. “At first, we thought it was just a rumor.”
Casey Grady works at Jami’s Cut-N-Up in downtown. Grady said the town had been talking about this for weeks, and the word traveled to the beauty salon really fast.
“It’s unbelievable, we had to move everybody last minute,” Grady said. “For something like this to hit our town, it’s truly unbelievable. We heard about it pretty early, so we knew way before they announced it because we are the hair salon; we are the gossip central. So we heard it, people didn’t believe it, and they were like, ‘Oh, it’s just people talking.’ Really hit the town yesterday when the barricades started coming out. This is happening.”
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Just up the road, Myers owns ReWed Bridal and Formal. She told ABC13 that most people in the beginning were very skeptical.
“You know small towns love to talk,” Myers said. “Sometimes it’s fun to banter among business owners. And I started to see some of the AI-generated photos and things that people were doing with their businesses, but it turned out it was real, and I started to see it in the local news, and the town posted about it.”
After the rumors turned out to be true, she said the people started to brighten up and get excited.
“I was at a little local family-owned restaurant, and everybody was talking about it,” Myers said. The servers and the customers, and you could just hear the excitement in the chatter. It’s gonna put us on the map for people who have never been here before. A lot of people have trickled in, and today, as all of the customers came in, they can see the road closures and the signs around town, and a lot of people didn’t know what was going on. When I said, ‘Hey, the town is closed tomorrow, the schools are closed tomorrow because the Royal Family is coming,’ they were like, ‘ What, is that a joke?’ No, it’s not a joke, it’s true.”
Front Royal’s America 250 Parade will go down East Main Street, and several businesses have decorated their front windows and lined the streets with the Union Jack flag. While ABC13’s Hayden Robertson was walking through, he met a group of people celebrating with a Union Jack flag hanging from their porch and was introduced to Virginia Beer Museum owner David Downes.
“I am second-generation British,” Downes shared.
He explained that he opened the beer museum because of his love for British pubs. Downes said of all the places the Royal Family could visit, he’s glad they are making a stop in Front Royal.
“It’s significant because this is a small town and a great community that knows how to come together,” Downes said. “My experiences traveling through England, a lot of it had to do with the corner pub where the community got together. It wasn’t a big city, but the community came together in small places just like Front Royal.”
The America 250 Parade in Downtown Front Royal starts Thursday morning at 10. Everyone shared that they are happy to welcome the Royal Family to Front Royal.