Carved LA Review - Adventures with Family and Food

For the past few years, we have been attending Enchanted Forest of Light at Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge and we all love that show. So, obviously it would be a no-brainer to attend Carved LA, the halloween-themed light show similar to Enchanted but focuses on pumpkins and pumpkin-carving. And yet again, another family-friendly, kid-friendly Halloween event that my kids loved. Carved LA is located at the Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge and runs from Oct 6-29. Ticket prices are slightly expensive at $25-30 for kids 2-12 years old and $35-45 for Adults. The higher end of the price tends to be for weekend tickets including Friday and the lower end of the price is for weekday tickets. If you are a member of Descanso Gardens, you get a $5 discount per person. Although the tickets seem to be on the pricier side, the parking and FREE in their lot or on the street.

It’s pretty easy to get around with signs pointing you in the right direction for the next installation. It’s very stroller friendly as well with ample room to park your stroller as you look at the different installations. A lot of the paths have hay and dirt, so a stroller with bigger wheels would make it easier to maneuver through the gardens. Although Carved LA doesn’t take up the entirety of the Descanso Gardens, it is a quite large portion of the gardens so there will be plenty of walking and will likely take over an hour to get through everything. It took us about 2.5-3 hours but we were taking our time and letting the kids play in the kid-friendly installations. Please note that the bathrooms are at the very beginning of the event or towards the end of the “path” so you’ll want to go to the bathroom before you enter or walk all the way back when you do need to use the restroom. We are at the tail end of potty training our daughter but if the bathrooms are too far, we might have an accident. Luckily, we made it but geez was I sweating trying to get her there.

There are few interactive installations and quite a bit of view-only installations. When you first walk in, there is an ofrenda (alter) for Dia de Los Muertos where people could put notes to their deceased loved ones. There were tons and tons of notes and pictures. Once you went a little further, there is the infamous pumpkin house that you can take a picture in. To the right of the pumpkin house is a haystack maze where plenty of kids were going through it and climbing on top of the haystacks. We spent quite some time here. Next is the field of lit up pumpkins, they seemed to go on for miles although I’m sure it was just a few hundred feet. After the pumpkins, there was a light installation around trees where people could walk on different lights and the lights would change color. My kids spent a good amount of time jumping on lights to change the colors. In this area, you could also see a moon installation. Next, was the rose garden where it looks like fireflies were in the rose bushes and a laser light show with music. Next, we got to see the actual carved pumpkins that were carved by different artists and some were working on pumpkins right there in front of us. We were amazed by how detailed their work was. These pumpkins were huge, often 100 pounds or more. After the carved pumpkins, some halloween themed lanterns lit the way back to the beginning of Carved where the exit was.

For the food, Carved had a couple of snack shacks with food for kids and adults, chips, beverages and more. One was towards the beginning near the pumpkin house and maze and the other was by the carved pumpkins. My kids got some chips and churros and my husband got a vegetarian frito pie. They seemed to enjoy them all. I, on the other hand, went to the bar to get myself a drink. They had their signature hot chocolate and hot cider (they also have this at Enchanted) which you can get spiked. So I ordered a hot cider spiked with bourbon. It was delicious and perfect for a cool night. They had other cocktails like margarita or spiced mule, or you could get beer or wine. They also had places where you could buy little gifts or light-up trinkets.

Overall, I would definitely recommend Carved LA to anyone looking for an interesting Halloween-themed event to go to. It’s great for adults and kids. The parking is FREE. The light installations were amazing. The food and drinks were good. My only gripe is that it was slightly expensive. But hey, we did spend almost 3 hours there.