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The DWP Light Festival in
Griffith Park is a purely frivolous holiday confection for the whole family. Walking or driving can both be fun if you plan it right.
When I was a kid, my family would pile into the car one evening before Christmas and drive through our town to look at all the houses with their Christmas light displays. Nowadays, only a few people really seem to deck the halls with strings of incandescence. Nostalgic dreams of those sleepy toasty-warm winter night rides probably inspired, at least in part, the genius who came up with the idea of the DWP Light Festival to offer families today a similar kind of memory.
If you want to drive, load up with hot cocoa, or spirits for the adults not driving, and patience for the follies of others. Play some holiday songs you can sing along to. There is music along the Festival mile, but the wait coming up Crystal Springs Road from Los Feliz can be as much as a couple of hours.
However, you can avoid the crush by going at the end of the evening. I suppose folks are afraid the lights will be turned off and so give themselves plenty of lead to be sure to be through by the 10 pm closing time. We discovered by accident - okay we got lost in the park and ended circling all the way back to the beginning again - that the lights were still on at 10:10, there was not a car waiting, and the attendant waved us through with an encouraging invitation to visit the display. It was well after closing time, but in the spirit of the season, they seemed to be willing to make room for all.
If there is traffic when you get there, pick the left lane to go through. Almost all the lights are on the driver's side, and if you are in the right-hand land, you could find your view blocked by a herd of giant SUV's.
My friend and I decided to walk the mile of lighted displays instead of driving. We came in to the festival by the back route, taking Forest Lawn in Burbank to Zoo Drive and drove all the way to the parking lot with not a car in front of us.
The surreal stroll with blinking and animated light displays made us giddy and we laughed and sang like silly kids as we pointed and marveled. The air was brisk enough for us to imagine winter. All the people walking seemed happy. Many of the folks in the cars, on the other hand, did not. Definitely more fun to walk.
This is a free event
Open to the Public 5pm-10pm
November 22-December 30
http://www.dwplightfestival.com/
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