Holiday Events at Theme Parks & Attractions

Dolphins and killer whales aren’t the only thing leaping high at this top attraction in early spring. In commemoration of the annual Lunar New Year, special events focus on Asian cultures, with performances, foods, and decorations.

Watch Chinese acrobats creating human towers and performing other how-do-they-do-that stunts inside Mission Bay Theater. Outside, see lion dancers swirling in colorful costumes. Even dining at SeaWorld San Diego gets a Lunar New Year twist, with Asian-inspired food and drinks served during the festivities.

All events are included as part of your admission, so you can also take in all the other shows and enjoy the rides throughout SeaWorld during your visit.

Celebrating everything ocean—from amazing marine life to equally amazing conservation heroes—this two-day June festival sponsored by one of the world’s finest aquariums sheds light on the global ecosystem that covers 70 percent of the our planet. Enjoy live music, samplings of sustainable seafood, crafts for all ages, and awards presentations shedding light on inspiring leaders in ocean conservation. The weekend-long waterfront party also includes special  feeding of the aquarium’s life aquatic life, including sharks, and plenty of face time with the every-popular sea otters. For a special twist, consider taking part in the festival’s family sleepover (advance reservations are required).

The festival also includes Monterey Bay Aquarium’s innovative Cooking For Solutions programme. Special food and wine adventures, led by celebrity chefs and culinary experts, head out into the field—to local ranches, wineries, and other locations—and into the kitchen for hands-on demonstrations and samplings.

Get ready to scream—beyond the signature thrill rides—when you visit Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood. And we don’t mean just from the usual thrill rides. In this series of incredibly popular scare-fest nights, the theme park turns into a haunted nightmare that will likely scare the willies out of the most stoic of visitors.

The thumping heart of Halloween Horror Nights is found in its mazes, the “scare zones” on the theme park’s streets that re-create shriek-inducing moments from iconic horror films and television series such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween. Visitors get to walk through movie-quality haunted houses populated with ghoulish, masked, or zombified actors, known to dart out from darkened corners.

“We wanted to completely fabricate an original story that brings together our absolute freakiest, scariest, most disturbing ideas,” says Crypt TV director Eli Roth, who has helped create one of the annual Terror Trams for the theme park. “Halloween Horror Nights is the must-see event for any horror movie fan—like the Super Bowl for scary movies—and is my favourite event of the year.”

The latest maze, inspired by season one of Netflix’s hit series Stranger Things, is slated to come to life at Universal Studios Hollywood on September 14, 2018. Past mazes have included “American Horror Story: Roanoke,” based on the popular FX series; “The Shining,” inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s classic horror film; “Saw,” tied to the horror-film series’ October debut, Jigsaw; and “Insidious: Beyond the Further,” a paranormal fright-fest that offers a kind of preview for the 2018 thriller, Insidious: The Last Key.

The event’s other staples give spooky makeovers to park attractions, like the masked Jabberwockies dancers performing at the Special Effects Show. Or, board the Terror Tram, the movie backlot train tour that has been hijacked for the 2017 season by “titan of terror” Chucky—and includes stops like the actual Psycho House and the Bates Motel from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller.

Hollywood Horror Nights runs from mid-September through early November, but the opportunities to get freaked out don’t end there. The park’s Walking Dead Attraction runs year-round, supported by a cast of actors and animatronic zombies created from the AMC series’ original molds.

Insider Tip: Universal Studios Hollywood does not recommend Halloween Horror Nights or the Walking Dead Attraction for guests younger than 13.

Santa’s reindeer apparently like San Francisco. Several of the antlered beasts of burden—specifically zoo residents Belle, Holly, Peppermint, and Velvet—welcome visitors during December’s weeklong Zoo Lights event. Other evening activities aimed to get all ages in the holiday spirit include performances by storytellers, jugglers, magicians, and more, plus snow flurries on cue, and thousands of twinkly lights throughout the grounds.

Also in San Francisco, reindeer romp up on the rooftop of the California Academy of Sciences, in Golden Gate Park. Visit with the animals, then—as would be appropriate for a science museum—check out interactive exhibits to learn how wild reindeer make an epic journey of up to 3,000 miles/4,828 kilometers per year, thanks to unique adaptations.