The Wild | Chinese Lantern Festival

The traveling Chinese Lantern Festival, The Wild, opened this past week at the Huntsville Botanical Garden and we made a family date of it to go check it out opening night. We've been members of the HBG since we moved here four years ago, and just love supporting it. 

You can see all the installations during the day with normal garden admission (or membership), so Parker and I checked them out this way first. Everything was so bright and colorful, and so neat to see!

If you want to see everything lit up, however, you'll need special festival tickets, good from 5:30pm on which can be purchased HERE. We snagged our tickets for opening night, which just so happened to also be the first day of spring (and the day we took Parker home from the hospital six years ago!). We waited until nightfall to get the full experience. 

It was so different at night! The lights brought out so many more colors and details in the lanterns, and there was additional music, sound and movement too!

Max brought the SLR to snap some photos, which meant he also had to bring along the tripod since the dark called for long exposure and a super still camera. We were those silly people who also used it for a family photo.

Mostly, however, Max used it to get some awesome shots of the exhibits. I, on the other hand, used my iPhone and Instastories and got some pretty awesome pictures, too!

Also so different, the same subject via iPhone (above) and SLR (below). Side note, the tulip walk might have been my very favorite sight of the whole night!

 Parker's favorite was this tiger display - he insisted on pretending to be one of them, haha!

The photo below of Tiger Parker is Max's favorite 🐅

If you're wondering what Max looked like hauling around the tripod...

He wasn't the only one:

The entire loop was one mile (with markers every so often to indicate how far you were in into the journey). 

At the very end of the loop there's a Kung Foo stage, a tent with small shops, a shadow puppet show, and...

... rideable mechanical dinosaurs, lol. Our little dino lover was in heaven (I mean, once we finally convinced him to get on one).

If you're local, the Chinese Lantern Festival is a must-see!