san francisco — A new nighttime holiday display featuring music, colors and more than a million twinkling lights in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park will delight children and adults.
Towering peonies and fields of lights line the mile-long (1.6 km) illuminated path in the city’s botanical garden. Artists created exotic water lilies and giant dragonflies, and turned a Canary Island strawberry tree into a neon tree.
“Some of my favorite comments have been from the kids: just listening to how they feel, the happiness and joy,” said Sarah Marsh of Golden Gate Park, which manages the botanical garden.
“And to be honest, it’s about the expressions on their faces when they see the lights and experience the track itself,” she said.
The immersive holiday trails, called Lightscape, exist at sister parks in Chicago, Brooklyn and London, but this is the first in San Francisco. Sony Music and production management company Culture Creative, based in the UK, work with each location to create a holiday itinerary specific to the park.
Large crowds flock to the San Francisco Light Fair, which ends Jan. 4. The exhibition has already attracted 100,000 visitors, Marsh said, with some visitors keen to return during the day to see the plants that amazed them at night.
“What we hope to do is spark curiosity,” she said.