The Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze
One of the very first things we did when we were planning our trip to Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow, was book our tickets for the Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze. The hugely popular event sells out quickly, with some of the more in-demand dates (weekends close to Halloween) and times snatched up before fall even begins. When we went to book our tickets (in September) the only weekend time available before Halloween was Sunday, October 27th at 9pm. We grabbed them, and planned our day around the Blaze. I'm so, SO glad we did because it was definitely the highlight of the trip, and a great way to end the night.
I actually discovered the Blaze a few years ago when I was still living in Ohio. I obsessively read all about it (including their hilarious faq page) and tried desperately to figure out a way to make an October trip to the Hudson Valley happen. Fast forward a few years, I'm living much closer to the action and one of my friends mentions that he'd like to take a trip to Sleepy Hollow in the fall. He had never heard of the Blaze before, but it didn't take much convincing to get him (and then the rest of our group) to trust my enthusiasm enough to book our tickets more than a month in advance.
In all of my planning and research I had somehow misread the descriptions, and initially thought that there were 500 pumpkins, which seemed like a lot to me. That is, until I read it correctly and realized the Blaze featured more than five THOUSAND hand carved and lighted pumpkins. Turns out that only about 1,000 of those are real — the rest are plastic, carveable "funkins" and reused year after year. This really doesn't affect the integrity of the event, however, and it's nearly impossible to even tell which ones are real and which are fake. As far as I could tell all of the ones closest to the path were definitely real and it's so dark and they're SO BRIGHT AND SHINY, so who cares in the end. Seriously, the entire thing was dazzling and even though I was there I still can't really fathom that I saw more than 5,000 pumpkins.
There were your standard, "face" carvings (in every variety you can think of, and then some), but the more elaborate displays really stole the show. It's impossible to pick favorites — from dinosaurs and zoo animals, to witches, mummies, skeletons, spiders, bees, bats and an entire yard of cat pumpkins (ok, I might have actually squealed with delight upon seeing so many cat pumpkins) — there was definitely something for everyone.
There was a grandfather clock with a swinging pendulum, jack-in-the-boxes with pop-up pumpkin heads and a new-this-year, walk-through tunnel lined with hundreds of carved pumpkins.
The event was very nicely controlled, with a winding, roped off path that you followed through the entire grounds. This made sense to protect the pumpkins, but also gave you unobstructed views of every single carving. The low-light does make it difficult to get great photos (with an iPhone at least), but please don't be one of those people that thinks turning the flash on will give you a Pulitzer-prize winning shot. All it actually does is give you a crappy, washed out photo of pumpkins, where you can't even see the carvings and the person next to you can't see anything at all for a few minutes.
There was a bottle-neck at one point in the pathway, where we had to wait about fifteen minutes to keep moving, but otherwise the night was as smooth as can be, especially considering the crowd. Parking was free (always a plus), and there's a tent to wait in until your admission time, although we were allowed in a few minutes before nine.
We had just eaten dinner so we didn't partake in any of the food, although had I known that they had apple cider donuts I definitely would have come home with some. They even sell a soundtrack made up of original music composed specifically for the Blaze (they're on volume IIalready). The displays change a bit every year, so I definitely want to make the Blaze an annual tradition — especially now that I'm only a short Metro-North train ride away.
Happy Halloween!
