Aurora Winter Festival
New to Vancouver this year is the Aurora Winter festival. The outdoor event hosts a selection of large Christmas lights displays and interactive games for family, as well as an ice skating rink, tube slide and food trucks. Entrance tickets cost $20 for adults and you will have to pay additional for tubing tickets, food and ice skate rentals.
If you went to Enchant last year, it’s a similar event but seems to be a larger scale and more well-planned with stroller parking, actual pavement ground and tickets with timed entrances to manage the amount of visitors at one time.
Lights
The light installations were pretty and large, featuring reindeers, tunnels and plants like trees. They had a cute castle where an ice queen (not Elsa sorry) took photos and certain “adult igloos” with a dance floor and a bar that served alcoholic drinks in a sparkly bottle.
In the maze area they also had bubble machines to create the illusion of snow.
Food
For food we purchased food from several food trucks – the Dirty rice bowl from Fat Duck bowl, Porchetta sandwich from Meat & Bread, Kevin Bacon from Reel Mac n Cheese, and a hot apple cider with cinnamon.
Activities
We did end up renting skates. The ice skating rink was a little small, like a skinny river but it had some cool light installations on the rink like a golden christmas tree and a narwhal.
We didn’t try the tube slide because there was over an hour line up to buy a tubing ticket and then you would need to line up to the actual tube slide. We watched some bands perform in the warm tented areas and left at around 9pm after spending 2 hours. In total we spent around $100 for everything.
Final thoughts
Aurora was a fun winter festival but things were pricey when added up. It also only got increasingly more busy as the night continued so I would recommend buying earlier tickets to avoid the crowd and the cold.
The festival seemed to be targeted for families, with lots of family-friendly amenities and activities. It would also be a fun thing to do with your significant other, but if you go with a big group of friends it may feel overly crowded and chaotic.