Bellingrath Gardens & Home — Attraction in Dauphin Island

This was my 2nd visit for my birthday and I do think it was just as spectacular as the 1st visit a couple years back. I want to truly recognize the closing staff on duty 12/05/21. Apparently they begin to shut down at 9:00PM, however still allow customers to purchase entry until that time. We arrived at 8:50PM. I inquired, to make sure that we would still be allowed to walk the garden display, which takes an hour or more,then enter the gift shop? I was directed to go to the gift shop first, because they locked up at 9:00pm. I then asked again if we would still be allowed to re-enter to the gardens, and again was assured by the entry sales clerk that we would. So we proceeded into the store and made purchases. Two members of our group finished faster and proceeded into the garden, when I entered and was waiting on my daughter and my fiancé to join me, they were stopped and told they were closed and the lights were being turned off at this time. We were instantly upset, for one we traveled almost 2hrs to see it, we had asked and told we could enter, there are no rain checks and it was my 51st bday. My daughter and I told them how we were allowed to buy entry at 10 mins to closing, plus my other family members were already walking through about 10 mins ahead. The employee who had stopped us, told us see what we could and let us proceed, but we had to go in backwards as some areas had already been shut down. Well whomever was in charge this fretful night, had us rerouted to meet up with our family, kept the lights on, told me happy birthday, and to take our time. For the record Bellingrath is listed in the top 20 in the USA of places to visit. However from my experience this now, shining brightly night, is the number one place to demonstrate understanding, compassion, and customer service from a team of individuals employees. A team, that let five customers keep them from closing and going home for an additional hour and half. These people truly embraced the Christmas Spirit that shined so brightly. I truly believe, Mr. & Mrs. Bellingrath themselves embraced this spirit in their lives and shared it, not just during the holiday but everyday. So "The Best of the Best" is how am rating the phenomenal individuals that went up and beyond in customer services for my family and I. We sincerely appreciate you and want you to know how grateful we...

We have come two consecutive years in a row now. First, I will say if you have never been before, definitely go! It's absolutely amazing and borderline overwhelming at how many lights there are. Having said that, the big downfall is just how busy it is. After going during the week between Christmas and New Years last year, we decided to come on a Thursday in the second week of December this year to avoid crowds...it was still incredibly packed! The light displays are definitely beautiful, but the pathways are narrow in a lot of areas and the crowds basically corral and push you forward. There's really only limited areas to stop and reflect or take photos without holding up a line of people. Every time you turn around there is someone directly behind you. The easiest solution would be just raise prices and cap attendance (and stagger entrance times so everyone does not get there right at 5-6pm)...which can be done using the online ticketing system already in place. Unfortunately I don't think they have any desire to do this for fear of backlash and they fact they work off volume. Some other commentary: There is only minimal change in the light display between the years, so if you have good memory and go every year, it won't be that much different than the previous year. The food/drink options are very limited. It would be awesome if they invited some food trucks (i.e. Mo' Bay Beignet) to expand their offerings, but I'm sure they want to keep food and beverage revenues in house. The $10 extra Home Tour add-on nice, definitely interesting to see and older home and historical value, but the tour is rather short (we went on a night where there was a power outage and they were backlogged on tours, so maybe they just expedited the tours to get people through?). My personal opinion is this: If you have never been, absolutely go! If you want to come here every year and make it a tradition, be prepared to live with the...

PARENTS RETHINK THE HOME TOUR. JUST DO THE LIGHTS. Decided to do the garden and home tour for the Christmas lights while we were in town. The light portion was amazing. The home tour was a travesty. My wife and I attempted for our 1st attempt to go into the home tour to go in with our stroller because we have a 19 month old and a 6 week old. There was no indication that you couldn't take in a stroller. We were told that we couldn't take the stroller in and would have to take our kids out of it and leave it outside... no space designated for a stroller just outside the house. Anyone could have taken the stroller and walked off. We go to get our kids out and they just invite the rest of the people into the house and leave us outside with the door shut. Rude as hell. The tours go every 30 minutes so we decided we'd try again. We walk through the entire gardens and come back for the 2nd attempt. We unload our 19 month old ahead of the time window, decide to take the 6 week old in the car seat because of the amount of people around. We try to go into the house and immediately get asked what's in our covered car seat. I'm like an infant... they said oh we didn't know if it was supposed to be for the other one... our 19 month old is 30lbs and just under 3ft tall... how would that have worked? We get into the home finally. We are in the 1st room for only 20 seconds when our 19 month old cries for about 5 seconds and we are immediately told very rudely that our family would have to wait outside for 5 minutes and be given a tour separately from the rest of the group that was going at that time. We had had enough. We explained that we would not be coming back for a 3rd attempt and would be getting our $30 extra we paid to go on the home tour refunded. After about 25 minutes with admissions we get told that someone the next day would be contacting us about a refund since we had bought our...