![]() ![]() ![]() You’ll venture through scenes that interpret the arrival and departure of stars in an earthly garden: archways pulsate with light and mist, perforated lanterns spell out a stargazing journey, shooting stars chase up and down a cylindrical frame, shimmery bulbs blanket a forest floor and tranquil lanterns float among the trees. While some other year-end light shows seem less focused on moment-to-moment encounters and more on the photogenic snaps you’ll walk away with, Astra Lumina feels truly experiential. But if you loved last year’s version or haven’t been at all, we still think this is a worthwhile (albeit expensive) event-perhaps better suited for a date night than a large-family affair. This year’s show is basically identical if you feel like you got your fill last year, there’s nothing new to explore. ![]() toward the end of the year.Īfter its 2022 debut, Astra Lumina returns to South Coast Botanic Garden with the same array of celestial-inspired displays. There’s nothing Christmassy nor even wintry about this hour-long Palos Verdes trail, yet its nine stellar installations are the most cosmically mesmerizing of the budding after-dark botanical garden shows that’ve come to blanket L.A. Though Zoo Lights has eschewed most overtly Christmassy elements outside of this area (a thematically focused upgrade to its original versions, in our opinion), it hasn’t ditched interactive spectacle. You can stomp on a color-changing hopscotch path, relax on illuminated swings, dance inside a shell of kaleidoscopic mirrors and bounce on some glowing seesaws.īuy your timed tickets (available in two sessions nightly) in advance to avoid The too-narrow lights tunnels here have been ditched in favor of a vision-filling polar playground, a gleefully gaudy burst of rainbow lights and icy structures that’ll make sure you don’t leave wishing that there’d been more lights. This year’s biggest change comes to the northern edge of the grounds, where you’ll find the Winter Wildlands area. Flora shares some of the focus, too, particularly in the golden glow of the field of grazing bison. Though the theme has carried over from last year, the selection of lanterns inspired by the venue’s wild residents is completely different this time around plentiful and vibrant, these parrots, bears, butterflies, scorpions and owls come to life with playful movements and animation. Once again, the event’s “Animals Aglow” edition has gone all in on oversized animal-shaped lanterns, and the result is a colorful, charming trail that celebrates the zoo’s natural inhabitants. Zoo is staying open after dark most nights through January during this delightful take on its light-up holiday tradition. Though some of the new additions around the rose garden feel a bit ordinary, Enchanted is otherwise mostly as magical as always-aside from the pricing. The $35 starting price is costly but common for these sorts of events now, You can still tap the “Rainbow Sycamore” columns, and the event is just as intuitively immersive as ever. And, true to its botanical garden location, most of the installations highlight the natural beauty of Descanso’s flora-with a refinement that sets it apart from most other light shows. The other big change comes on the main lawn, where sculptor Tom Fruin’s kaleidoscopic stained-glass–inspired houses now sit flanked by smaller ones that let you smash a button to control the lighting.Įlsewhere, Enchanted delightedly looks much like it has in the past: a field of faux tulips ripples with waves of (seemingly more intense this year) twinkling color changes while the mist-filled “Ancient Forest” still beckons visitors with its straight-out-of-E.T. That’s where you’ll also now find HYBYCOZO’s familiar 3-D light sculptures, whose dizzying, spinnable versions return this year. This year’s event, which runs from November 19 through January 7, has shuffled some existing installations around and opened up a new glowing area around the rose garden. Each year, the botanical garden’s nighttime experience masterfully mixes hands-on art installations with atmospheric, luminescent forests, all against a background of uplit trees and shimmery sound effects.
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