Jack O Lantern Spectacular

The Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular returns to Roger Williams Park Zoo this year after a four year hiatus and spectacular is a perfect word to describe this special event. The night-time walk is open nightly from 6:00pm to 11:00pm, with the last entry at 10:00pm, and runs through November 1. Adults cost $12.00 and kids 3-12 cost $9.00.

When to go

We recommend going on a weeknight as far away from Halloween as you can. The weekends and week before Halloween are very busy, which means long lines. Wait times to get into the trail can be up to 2 hours on a busy night, which should be motivation enough to get there on a weeknight. We visited on the Monday before Halloween and found the wait to be 45 minutes. Dress appropriately for standing around in the cold and brings some activities to keep the kids entertained while you wait. On many nights there are some entertainers along the trail while you wait, which is great to help pass the time.

What to Expect

Picture yourself walking along a wooded trail in the dark, but instead of darkness on both sides, you see specially lit Jack-O-Lanterns with varied musical accompaniment. Over 5,000 pumpkins are on display to create this spectacle, making it an incredibly impressive sight. Since the Spectacular lasts for one month, the pumpkins need to be replaced, thus another 5,000 pumpkins are used.

The theme of this year’s presentation is “Fables of the Great Writers,” and included depictions of Alice in Wonderland, Sleepy Hollow, classic tales of the Brothers Grimm, Moby Dick, and many more famous stories. Many of the pumpkins are carved with standard faces while a small percentage of the 5,000 have special designs. This may not sound like much, but you will want to stop at each one to admire the beauty and work of the artists that created them, and at some point they seem endless.

One of the biggest highlights for us was about 10 minutes into the trail where you encounter a vast display of carved pumpkins. Several were so big that they were carved out and filled with other pumpkins! The weights of a few larger ones were displayed, with some topping the scales at 1100-1300 pounds. Smoke was added to the display, as well as loud music, and pumpkins were even strung up the trees like Christmas lights. As you can imagine, this area gets pretty crowded.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 2:50 am and is filed under Events. If you use RSS, you can subscribe to the RSS feed , or if you would rather receive an e-mail, please subscribe to the e-mail in the lower right hand corner of this page. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.