In 2016 Gilroy Gardens brought in a Chinese lantern festival with great success. Barb Granter, Vice President and General Manager for the park, explained that they wanted to build on that success with additional evening-focused festivals during 2017. They worked with long-time collaborator BaAM Productions to create a “Gardens at Night” event. A basic foundation of lights were installed around the park, with the ability to add decorations and change the lighting colors to reflect three distinct seasonal events.
The first event focused on a Halloween theme, followed by a harvest event, and culminating with a winter holiday theme. The harvest focused event included a food, beer and wine festival that Granter said folks treated “like the newest hip bar in town.”
“We’ve been very happy with the results,”said Granter. “We are looking forward to experimenting to see what it can grow into.”
In other news at Gilroy Gardens, the park is expanding its water oasis – doubling its size. A new train system will be incorporated into the plans and provide an up-close view of the experience as it travels underneath the water bucket tower. The waterpark is being increased from 1/2 acre to 1 acre, with hopes of one day expanding to a 12 acre waterpark resort. Both JRA and WhiteWater have assisted with design and planning, which complemented the expansion and planning work BaAM assisted with a couple years ago.