The Illuminated Gardens

The San Diego Botanical Gardens were dressed up in the glow of various lights for their Christmas illumination event. They had several different trails that you could start from. All of them loop around so that no matter which starting point you take you will see everything before getting back to your respective lot. We started at the blue lot. As the name suggests, we entered through a haze of blue. After that, we wandered into a grove of dancing green pixies. The theme playing sounded an awful lot like the theme from Hocus Pocus, but that might’ve just been me. Either way, I’m giving points for making me have the connection.

Different Lands

From there the trail would continue between different kingdoms of lights. Some were more mystical in their coloring like those of an ethereal land. Others were a harder neon, reminiscent of a 50’s diner motif. Still a good number more were color changing. With the variety of color patterns also came different types of light and various ways of utilizing them. Glow lights, bioluminescent strings, rope lights, scatter lights, and so on. Each of these different glowing realms was equipped with their own matching music right up to a giant jewel-like star where they very appropriately played, ‘when you wish upon a star’. Along the trail were at least three stands selling drinks and snack food items such as cookies and cocoa. I opted to try the cider (non-alcoholic version). It was good, but I had to ask for the whipped cream as it wasn’t automatically put on and to me, cider isn’t complete without that extra touch of whip cream sweetness.

Some nitpicks

One downside was that only a few of the songs were Christmas themed and it is December. That said, the music did still match with each theme. If I had to nitpick, it probably would have been nice if the lights and music were synced, but that’s an incredibly minor thing. Also, although the trail was well done there was one area that was not well planned through. A long tunnel made out of strings of white flower lights. The trouble was the tunnel kept getting clogged with people wanting to take pictures. There wasn’t really much order imposed by the hosts overseeing it other than pictures on one side, passing by on the other. Which quickly fell apart as the tunnel kept getting over-crowded. Despite this hiccup, it was still a nice, pretty tunnel.

The Conclusion

All in all, it was a magically lovely, wonderful experience. I’d recommend anyone going to San Diego for the holidays, or maybe if you live down there already and just haven’t tried it yet, not to let yourself miss out on it. The tickets are a little pricey, but it’s worth it to try at least once in your life.