Lantern Fest 2018

On Saturday, June 9, we attended our second Lantern Fest! Although they are held all around the country, we again drove up to PA, outside of Philadelphia – the same location where we attended last summer.  This time, though, we went with a group of some of my favorite people ever, and I am so glad we were ultimately able to make it work, because it some herculean efforts for us to all get there!

We originally had tickets for Sunday, June 10, which we bought to celebrate the last day of school on June 8. We kept checking the forecast in the days leading up to the weekend and frankly, it didn't look promising. When these events are canceled due to rain, they try to offer alternative dates when tickets will be honored, but there are no refunds. As such, we weren't sure if things were going to work out because rain was predicted for Sunday.

On Friday, we had our last day of school, and decided we would keep an eye on the weather and make any decisions on Sunday. However, on Friday night, the event organizers posted on the Lantern Fest FB page that since the weather was looking terrible for Sunday, they would honor all Sunday tickets at the Saturday event (that had been sold out when we originally purchased our tickets) for anyone who was able to get there on Saturday and that they would make a decision about whether to cancel the Sunday event sometime on Saturday.

As a result, two of the eight people in our group decided they would not be able to make it because they had tickets on Saturday afternoon to a baseball game. A third person in our group coaches softball and would be away at a game on Saturday afternoon, so it was unlikely that she would be able to make it. That left five of us, and on Saturday morning, we decided the five of us would go. We all piled into the car and hit the road around 2:30 on Saturday afternoon for the three-hour drive.

We hit some traffic along the way, which was not great, but as we were driving, the other three people told us they'd be able to join us, which was amazing news!

The five of us arrived at about 6 pm, which gave us plenty of time to pick up our lanterns, find a good spot of the field to set up our chairs, and get some food. I had all of the tickets, so when our two friends arrived, I walked out to the gate to meet them, and then we were able to spend time decorating our lanterns as the sun went down. Our final friend arrive right around 9:00 as it was getting dark and just in time for the launch around 9:30. Most importantly of all, we were finally all together!

If you have never attended one of these lantern fests, I cannot recommend it strongly enough! It is a completely magical experience to stand in the darkness and watch thousands of lanterns rising up into the night sky. The pictures simply do not do it justice!

After about half an hour of launching and observing the lanterns, we packed up our things and things and headed home. I'm sure there was scintillating conversation happening in the seats in front of me, but I slept most of the way home (nothing new, if you've ever been in a car with me!).

I'm so happy that we were all able to make it work even though we had originally planned to go the next day…especially since the Sunday night event ended up getting canceled!

As Rapunzel sings in Tangled…"I just want to see the floating lanterns gleam!"

Happy Tails to you!