Keizer’s stadium will be aglow with new holiday festival

Keizer is getting a new addition to the holiday lineup that involves a scavenger hunt to help Santa, a tunnel of lights and a 40-foot Christmas tree.

The GLOW Christmas Light Festival takes over Keizer’s stadium, Roto-Rooter Park, as the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes operation teams up with a Canadian company to produce what promises to be a holiday spectacle.

The exhibition opens on Black Friday – Nov. 28 – at Roto-Rooter Park and runs through the end of the year.

Keizer is the latest addition to the GLOW venues, now staged in cities from a suburb of Vancouver, B.C., to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Hartford, Connecticut.

Mickey Walker, CEO of Salem-Keizer Volcanoes Baseball, took a break recently from helping prepare the displays to explain what guests will find.

The centerpiece is a family-centered display called Santa’s Lost Presents. Children are tasked to “find” presents intended for his elves but misplaced. They share their discoveries at the end with Santa.

Or as the Canadian company explains it: “Guests are invited to step into a beautifully lit landscape filled with soft snowfall, glowing characters, and cozy holiday scenes. The experience unfolds as a gentle scavenger hunt, where children search for lost gifts hidden among magical settings and familiar favorites.”

Walker said the holiday landscape, largely on the baseball field, includes a 100-foot light tunnel, that towering tree, local food trucks and a Merry Maker’s Market with holiday vendors.

An estimated 1 million lights are used to decorate the scene. GLOW officials say the strands would span 16 miles. There will be a castle, a snowman arch and a reindeer garden. Live entertainment is planned as well.

Daryl Driegen works for a large nursery company in Langley, just outside Vancouver. He said GLOW was established there in 2017.

“We as parents of young children were looking for a quality place to bring families together to celebrate the Christmas season,” Driegen said in an email to Keizertimes. “Instead of waiting for someone else, we figured we could utilize our greenhouse facility and build it ourselves.”

Walker said the Volcanoes for some time have considered establishing a Christmas festival at the stadium. He said his team encountered Driegen at some professional functions and opened talks to put Keizer on the map as a GLOW site.

“We really appreciated his mission of making it family-focused entertainment,” Walker said. “It felt like it matched what we wanted to produce.”

GLOW will open at 4:45 p.m. each day except Monday. Mondays will be added after local schools close for the holiday break starting with Monday, Dec. 22. Admission ends at 8 p.m. weekdays but the exhibit remains open until 9:15 p.m. on weekdays and until 9:45 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

The exhibit will be closed Christmas Day and New Year’s Day and finishes its run on New Year’s Eve with a fireworks show.

Tickets are available online at Oregon.glowgardens.com.

GLOW TICKETS

Children up to three: free

Children 4 to 12: $14.99

Seniors (65+): $14.49

Ages 13 to adult: $19.99

Family (2 adults, 3 children): $69.99

*Fees for online purchases

Parking: $5