Carved at Descanso Gardens — Attraction in La Cañada Flintridge

DO NOT COME HERE!

Alright, we visited Carved at Descanso Gardens back in October 29th 2024, I want to be really transparent about my experience, let’s begin with the environment, the garden is pretty nice and all with different decoration, lights and sound experiences, however the lack of proper fencing in some areas got us yelled at by a security guard killing the experience for me and my Fiancé. Be aware that security will be always watching you making the experience really uncomfortable, you can’t be free to take pictures because there is security guards right on site to tell you to move on or that you’re not allowed to stand or be in that area. I was bummed out because I thought this was a great activity/experience to spend with my fiancé, but having the eyes of everyone even the little shop vendors was pretty uncomfortable. Seems like we paid to get yelled at and surveyed all of our instance. We barely got any pictures because of this. The only good thing that people was not really appreciating was the artist carving the Pumpkins, that guy looked pretty chill and laid back the carvings he did were awesome (only thing I could’ve take pictures of) really bad experience because of security. I have to add that 2 tickets were almost $100, not coming back here ever.

(I FORGOT TO ADD: EVEN THE SECURITY AT THE PARKING LOT WHERE YELLING AT US LIKE LITTLE CHILDREN) THIS GUYS REALLY...

I was planning on going twice this year, but the experience is so downgraded that I'm only going the one time.

So, every year they just keep downgrading one of the most iconic parts of an event it was named after, the pumpkins in the pumpkin patch. In the photo, you can see two jack o lanterns on the center, they're foam, and not real. I kinda get that, the foam ones could last a year or two, and real ones wouldn't even last a whole season in some cases. But these ugly plastic ones that they have a ton of this year, the two on the left are just all over the pumpkin patch. There's also a lot of the ones on the right, that are just slightly better, but still so generic. Poorly painted, they look identical. Thin plastic that, as you can see, the light shines through.

The prices have gone up, but the quality here is just dropping like a stone. I see better jack o lanterns in people's yards!!! What am I paying for here?

If there's not at least some more human creativity injected into this section in the future, I'll be...

I am a huge fan of Descanso Gardens in general, but I was really disappointed with this year‘s version. Last year was much better and at least twice as long. They also put a lot more time into the exhibits last year. Nights of the Jack in Calabasas did a better job with the variety of displays this year, which was really surprising to us because we really enjoyed Carved last year. They also really fill the time slots because it was extremely crowded in there and kids were running around absolutely everywhere. It’s definitely not considered scary or anything in that realm, more so a bunch of different light shows. Parking is really easy and fairly close, so that’s a big bonus. I wish they would offer a larger variety of food, snacks, and drinks. We looked everywhere and could not find coffee for instance.

Overall 2022 was much better than this year. I will give it a chance next year, however, we did not enjoy this year nearly as much as we...