Alight at Night (Upper Canada Village, Ontario, Canada)

Back in October, we went to the Pumpkinferno event in Upper Canada Village, you can check out that post here. When we went there, we picked up the combo that included their winter event called Alight at Night. In the rare organized times, we set up the date with friends for this event. Granted there was no snwow when we went on the opening weekend, the city still brought a lovely holiday mood to everyone.

Alight at Night is different than Pumpkinferno. For one, this one leaves the exploration up to the visitor so you can wander outside and in the backyard of buildings and its  city maze in itself for this town transformed with lights. Aside from that is the obvious, its all different lights decorated instead of pumpkins. There was the Santa mansion and then the church had a live performance of a singer and her piano accompaniment that took song choices from the audience and performed them. You could watch the bakers make the bread on the spot. There are also shops and restaurants to eat. If you fancied, there are also horse drawn wagons to take you for a tour. If you choose to walk, just make sure to stick to the side of the path as to not step on anything you don’t want to. It took us about 2 hours to walk through (what we think is) everything.

Being the fool that I was, I forgot to charge the battery for the DSLR camera so only used my phone for these photos. I apologize for any bad quality and blur in advance.

That’s it for this beautiful event recap!
If I were to go again, I might have liked it after a light dusting of snow to give it an even more festive atmosphere.

Pumpkinferno 2017

We went back to Pumpkinferno this year at Upper Canada Village. This year, we had a pretty decent group with a lot of family and friends. Our group ended up being 6 adults and 6 kids which is a pretty sizable group. One advice I do have is that if you have a choice to not go during Thanksgiving weekend. It goes without saying but there’s traffic to go into the parking lot and the parking is packed solid so its a great distance to walk to the entrance. Second, is to buy tickets online before going because you won’t have to do the incredible line-up just to buy tickets to go in. My husband and I ended up buying the combo package for the winter event called Alight at Night also, so look out for that in December. We already planned out tentative days to go with some friends who are also interested. They didn’t come with our group for Pumpkinferno but apparently, they did a LONG traffic line-up to get in (like an hour or something).

This week is our vacation as we’ve taken last year also because its our wedding anniversary and we like to spend time together. This event came at a great time also since this is one of those events we discovered together as a couple back in 2012 or something. I posted that one back then and it is one of my posts that did the best and still get views every year. Its pretty sweet!

Anyways, this one was great. They had dragons and windmills. witches brewing, and Jailhouse Rock, and Coins from around the world and historical events as well as astronauts and snow activities as well as Dia de los muertos (if I spelled that wrong, I’m sorry).  Check it out and yet again, my Samsung Galaxy S6 does a great job at taking pictures but it still doesn’t do the exhibit justice…keep that in mind if you think it looks meh.

Let’s start!!

Heading to the start of the trail

After some funky pumpkins (not shown here), its time for some dragons…

And migratory birds

Witches are brewing

And Dia de los Muertos is also happening

Jailhouse Rock is going on with Elvis and Marilyn and Audrey (see below for Instagram video)

And we see coins of the world..its Canada 150 so here’s some Canadian coins

Then we get to test our knowledge of Canadian provinces with their trees and provincial flowers.

There’s even an art gallery and Mona Lisa is of course there.

Not pumpkins but near these windmills, we get a nice shot of the beautiful bright moon

Astronauts floating in space

And one of the most beautiful exhibits of snowflakes in the trees

Ending with some iconic snow activities like hockey games and dog sledding!

This is really just a fraction of  Pumpkinferno. If I added more pictures, it might take a millions years for anything to load on the page. I’ll probably post some other photos over at Avenue of Daydreams later in October. Before you go, as promised from above, here’s the Instagram video of the Jailhouse Rock exhibit. Its pretty awesome!

View this post on Instagram

#JailhouseRock playing at #Pumpkinferno at #UpperCanadaVillage ! #elvis #music #halloween #pumpkin #lights #event #ontario #canada

A post shared by Kim (@tranquildreams) on Oct 7, 2017 at 7:11pm PDT

That’s it for today’s Halloween post!
It felt a little inappropriate to talk about the Saw franchise today with the wedding anniversary!
Everything resumes tomorrow and man, do I have a ton of reviews to write up!

Halloween: Pumpkin Inferno at Upper Canada Village

A year ago, my visit to Pumpkin Inferno was what brought my views up to this crazy level that took me about another 6 months to break.  Word of mouth is a crazy and awesome thing, just my boyfriend’s coworker sharing it on their Facebook page and boom! My views were crazy.  If you’d like to see that post, check it out HERE!

This year, I went with not only my boyfriend but 6 other friends including fellow blogger Day’s. Earlier than last year, so that it wouldn’t be as cold.  This past weekend was the first weekend of its launch (if I’m not mistaken) and man, was it ever crowded at the beginning of the trail.

Compared to last year, they had similar pumpkin carvings but they did change the trail and modify how certain exhibits looked and then they added one new exhibit called The House of Horoscopes.

Under the Sea

Tiki Island

Chinese Water Dragon

Egypt

Pirates

Evolution and Time

Musical scene

Musical scene

Canada

Candyland

Carved Pumpkins

Beehives

House of Horoscopes

Aries

House of Horoscopes

Just Buried

Garden

A quick look at the better pictures that I took for Pumpkin Inferno! 🙂

It was still very fun.  Plus, the crowd spread out once we got into the wider area where the actual trail spreads out to both sides.  Going earlier this year also gave us a warmer weather.  If you do go, dress warm.  I felt comfortable with jeans, tank top, t-shirt and sweater (layers do miracles) and then even added a scarf once the sun completely went down.

Its definitely a great experience! I still had lots of fun. The creativity behind this entire event is so awesome!

The House of Horoscopes was my favorite as if there wasn’t that many people, the best way was to lie down on the grass and admire the details, just like you would if you were looking up at the stars and searching constellations.  By the way, there are certain areas in the path where its darker and if you lift your head, you see a sky full of stars.  We took in a bit of that rare scene.  Living in the big city has that disadvantage.  We’re lucky if we even see a star in the sky, let alone a sky dotted with them just sparkling away!

If you are close to Upper Canada Village, its well worth it.  Our drive was about an hour and 40 minutes each way and it wasn’t long and tiring either.  Nothing really ever replaces fun times with friends 🙂

Pumpkin Inferno!

So continues the Halloween month, right? Its not only going to be movies, as you saw with my Japanese Pavillion post.

On Sunday evening, my boyfriend and I drove over to Morrisburg, Ontario (about a 2 hour drive) to go see Pumpkin Inferno at Upper Canada Village.  Pumpkin Inferno is this year’s event from 6:30pm – 9:30pm and it features a little trail in the dark with  jack-o-lanterns.  Maybe you don’t think its impressive but check this out: 6000 Jack O Lanterns everyone! Thats is a lot! On top of that, there were different themes as we walked along.  Some were multiple pumpkins put together to shape up a person, a thing, a creature, an animal, etc.  It was pretty amazing! If anyone is in the area, you definitely should check it out! My suggestion though (something my boyfriend and I forgot to do) is to dress warm.  You are in the middle of nowhere so its cold.

I took it as a little night shooting, to get to know my camera just a little better also.  Here are a few to share with you!

Devil Pumpkins

Headless Horseman

It was a little trail with different themes and scenarios.  I showed you a few here in somewhat of the correct order.  The first part was a Sound and Light Show and it was really amazing.  After that was a Haunted Mill and dived under the sea.  We went into heritage town with totem poles.  Then, we walked through Candyland, to insect world, into the Wild West with Zombie Westerns.  We went to China and Egypt (even Polynesia, but I didn’t add that here).  We saw the Headless Horseman and Mermaids guarding the bridge to safety.

There’s a lot more than what I showed here.  It was pretty cool.  They even had pirates and their treasure and clocks, zombie weddings and RCMPs, Lizards and Hitchcock’s “The Birds”.  It was all so beautiful.  My pictures really don’t do this event justice.  I highly recommend it to those around the area.  Dress up and go out! If you have kids, bring them along! I think for us, we saw only one other couple without kids, if not, they were there to do photo shooting with all their gear.

Nice little tour to ring in Halloween, right?