Every year my family has several holiday traditions that we enjoy doing together. One Christmas tradition is our annual trip down to Hershey Sweet Lights in Hershey, Pennsylvania. We’ve been visiting Sweet Lights every year for the past 6-7 years and it’s something our grandchildren always look forward to!
To kick things off, we always order pizza and have pizza for dinner. We then put the kids into their Christmas pajamas, grab our bags of popcorn and drinks, and off we go! Luckily for us, we only live about 20 minutes from the attraction. Oh yeah, bring along a few throw blankets, that way you can roll down the windows to see all of the fabulous lights and still stay warm.
If you’ve never been to Hershey Sweet Lights, here’s a few things you should know. It’s a holiday light show attraction and you stay in your car the entire time. The best time to go is during a weeknight, as the weekends get really crowded. The admission fee is “per car load” of people. Between $20 and $25 depending on when you go. They give each vehicle ONLY 2 pairs of 3-D glasses, so if you have any at home lying around, bring them along with you!
Once you pay your admission (at the gate) you drive along a designated route. You’ll want to tune your radio into the posted AM channel and listen to holiday music as you go along, or bring your own Christmas music CD with you. They have a public restroom on-site (extremely small) and they sell popcorn at the gate (expensive). I recommend bringing your own popcorn along with you.
You’ll slowly drive the designated and marked route which is lined on BOTH sides with Christmas and holiday light displays. You can go as slow or as fast as you want to go. Some drivers from time to time are impatient and well, that’s too bad. If we’re going too slow, they’re welcome to pass us!
There are some holiday themes set up along the way. You’ll see light displays that related to Hershey’s Chocolate and Hersheypark, the amusement park. There is a section called the Enchanted Forest which is my grandchildren’s favorite part of the course.
From start to finish…it takes us approximately 30-40 minutes to drive through all of the holiday light displays. Please keep in mind, we really take our time, so you can definitely drive through at a much quicker pace. Once we’re done…we head home and usually, the kids fall asleep on the ride back. Hence, why we dress them in their pajamas!
Have you every visited Hershey Sweet Lights? Do you and your family go out to enjoy seasonal Christmas light displays? Are there any good ones near you?
I enjoy seeing light spectacles. I want to visit Hershey, Pennsylvania in order to see all the sights, not just the lights.
That would be beautiful to see. I love Christmas lights. It’s one of my favorite things about this time of year.
We’ve never been to the Hershey Holiday Lights, but we do go to Oglebay Christmas lights which is similar and we have some smaller but free light displays near us. We always go as a family and bring hot chocolate and Christmas Mad Libs.
I have not visited those displays. It is too far from me. I do love looking at them. We have some displays here but nothing like that.
I havent been to this one,I bet it is spectacular. We do take a drive Christmas Eve or slightly before , turn the radio to Christmas carols and sing badly. We make popcorn and go out and see the lights here in town. I love it when it has just snowed.