Holiday lights season is the busiest stretch of the year for a lot of zoos, gardens and parks, and it's also the messiest to keep straight. The event runs most nights for six or seven weeks. It has its own hours that don't match your daytime hours. There are add-ons that only run on certain nights, a blackout date or two, and at least one night where the weather makes the call for you.
Guests check all of that on their phones, usually in the car on the way over. If what they see is out of date, you hear about it at the gate.
What a real holiday lights schedule looks like
It helps to look at a real one. Calgary Zoo's ZOOLIGHTS is a good public example (we have no connection to it, it's just well documented). From its event page, as of late October 2026:
The event runs November 13, 2026 to January 3, 2027, nightly from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m., with last admission at 9 p.m.
The zoo is closed on Christmas Day, December 25.
Santa is there nightly until December 23, but members get exclusive access until 6:30 p.m. on five specific Mondays.
Axe throwing runs Fridays and Saturdays until December 12, then every night from December 18 to January 3, except December 25.
A food and drink pass is offered every Thursday.
"Wonder Wednesdays" give a discount from November 18 to December 16.
Daytime ticket holders can only enter between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. during the season, and later arrivals need a combo ticket.
If extreme weather cancels a night, tickets get exchanged for another date.
That's one event with at least eight different rules about time. Plenty of light events follow a similar pattern: a long nightly run, a few recurring add-ons on set weekdays, a handful of one-off dates, and changes to regular hours while the season is on.
Where schedules usually go wrong
When an event like this lives in a few places at once (the website, a PDF map, social posts, signage and maybe an app), the same few things tend to slip:
Daytime hours stay up after they've changed. Regular hours shift for the season, but the old ones are still showing somewhere.
Recurring add-ons get entered as one long block. "Axe throwing, Nov 13 to Jan 3" reads fine until a family shows up on a Tuesday in November.
Exceptions get lost. Blackout dates and members-only windows are the details most likely to be missing.
Last-minute changes don't reach people who are already on site. A cancelled night or an attraction that's down for the evening only helps if guests hear about it before they walk across the park.
How to set it up in your app
Here's how we'd set up a holiday lights season in Attractionator. The same thinking applies whatever tool you use.
1. Build the base event as a recurring event. Create the nightly event once, with its start and end dates and its hours, instead of 50 separate entries. The event scheduling tools support both recurring events and one-time specials from a calendar view.
2. Add the extras as their own events. Give each add-on its own entry and its own repeat pattern: a Thursday food pass, a weekend-only activity, a members-only window. Then a guest looking at a Tuesday sees what's actually on that Tuesday. Use category filters (shows, talks, tours, special events) so people can find the thing they came for.
3. Put the exceptions in on day one. Enter blackout dates and early closures when you build the season, not the week of. It's a lot easier to remember Christmas Day in October than on December 23.
4. Schedule the seasonal content to appear and disappear. Your holiday lights map layer, banners and info pages don't need to be switched on and off by hand. On our zoo solutions page we cover this: you can schedule holiday lights content to show up and go away on set dates automatically. Set it to appear a couple of weeks before opening night so people can plan, and to come down the morning after the last night.
5. Use map layers for the night version of your site. A lights route often isn't your daytime route. Some buildings are closed and the food stops are in different places. A separate layer for the lights trail, warming spots and open restrooms keeps the daytime map clean. Guests can toggle layers to see what they need.
6. Have a plan for the bad nights. When a night gets cancelled or something on site goes down, update the event right away so the change shows in the app in real time. If you're on a plan with push notifications (they're part of Pro), send a short, plain message to the people it affects. Something like "Tonight's lights are cancelled due to the cold. Your ticket can be exchanged for another date, details in the app." Keep it to the facts, and skip the exclamation marks.
A quick pre-season checklist
Before opening night, it's worth having one person walk through the app the way a guest would:
Pick a random weeknight and a random weekend night. Does each one show the right hours and the right add-ons?
Check every blackout date and early close.
Check that daytime hours for the season are correct, not just the evening hours.
Open the map at the event start time and make sure the lights layer is on and the daytime-only spots are hidden.
Agree on who updates the app if a night gets cancelled, and how fast.
Holiday lights events are a lot of work to run, and the schedule shouldn't be the part that trips people up. If you want to see how a season like this looks in the admin dashboard, book a demo and we'll walk through it with you.