With nonstop parades, festivals, parties, performances, and activities, it’s fair to say that California’s theme parks and vacation spots turn almost every day into a holiday. Even so, certain times of year get even more spectacular.
There’s the Scotsfestival and International Highland Games, for instance, held every February adjacent to the built-in-Scotland and now permanently docked in L.A. Queen Mary. SeaWorld San Diego commemorates the annual Lunar New Year with a head-spinning array of tributes to Asian cultures, while across town at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, you can revel in clouds of butterflies at the spring Butterfly Jungle event. In July, LEGOLAND throws its blowout fireworks display, dubbed Red, White and BOOM, for the Fourth, and come Halloween, there’s Halloween Time at Disneyland and Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights. Both are sure to be a howling good time.
Then there’s the end-of-the-year holiday season, when the special seasonal events really get going. In San Francisco, the San Francisco Zoo and the California Academy of Sciences have reindeer meet-and-greets, ice skating, a Snowman Theater and more. The San Diego Zoo throws its annual Jungle Bells event, with elves on trampolines, 4-D holiday movies, and the Twinkle Light Trolley. And of course there’s Newport Beach’s Christmas Boat Parade, the largest boat parade of its kind in the world, where every kind of craft, from millionaires’ yachts to humble canoes and kayaks get festooned with colorful lights and other decorations. Kicking off the new calendar year are several seasonal events at Orange County’s Knott’s Berry Farm, including their annual Knott’s Peanuts Celebration and the Boysenberry Festival.