Del Mar Fairgrounds to light up again for the holidays next month

Taya Branwell, 9, right, and Gracie Vandenburg, 9, at the 2020 Holidays In Your Car at Del Mar Fairgrounds

Events include walk-through and drive-through lighted displays and a real snow hill for sledding

San Diego Union-Tribune

Nov. 6, 2021 5:36 AM PT

DEL MAR —

The Del Mar Fairgrounds will light up again for the holidays this year with both drive-through and walk-through illuminated displays, as well as a snow hill for sledding.

Beginning Dec. 4, the fairgrounds will bring back Holidays in Your Car, which debuted last winter and was a ticket sales smash due to most holiday festivities being canceled during the December 2020 COVID lockdown. This year’s drive-through event will feature a 1.5-mile display featuring more than 1 million LED lights accompanied by music, as well as holograms and multicolored wall projections up to 40 feet in height.

New this year will be the addition of a walk-through lighting path called Snow N Glow. Drivers can get out of their car and stroll through the display of more than 1 million lights. There will also be a snow tubing attraction where all ages can sled on a five-lane, 100-foot-long hill covered with real snow, and there will be a dedicated snow play area.

The fairgrounds will also offer for rental transparent geodesic dome “igloos” that are decorated with sofas, bean bags and seating, as well as a firepit for marshmallow-roasting. There will also be food and drinks for sale, including beer wine and s’mores-making kits.

The holiday events will run from 4 to 9 p.m. Fridays through Sundays, Dec. 4 through Jan. 2, as well as daily Dec. 20 through 23. Tickets to the walk-through Snow N Glow path are $17.99 for adults and $12.99 for children ages 3 to 10. Tickets to both Snow N Glow and the snow activities are $34.99 for adults and children. Children ages 2 and under are free. Holidays in Your Car tickets are $45 per carload. The number of passengers must not exceed the number of seatbelts in the vehicle.

All tickets are being sold online at snownglow.com/delmar.

Pam Kragen

Pam Kragen is the arts and entertainment editor, as well as the chief theater, dining and opera critic, for the San Diego Union-Tribune. She joined the Union-Tribune staff in October 2012 after 27 years at the North County Times, where she served as the Arts & Features Editor, as well as the paper’s longtime arts writer and theater and opera critic. She is the co-founder of the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from San Diego State University and completed fellowships in theater criticism at the University of Southern California and opera-classical music criticism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. And in 2022, she was chosen as one of the fellows in the prestigious National Critics Institute, run by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterf, Conn.