Celebration in the Oaks

As Texas residents, perhaps we are just used to Houston crowds and pricing, but honestly I am astounded by the number of poor and mediocre reviews for Celebration in the Oaks. My husband and I have brought our kids for the past few years and I think it's so wonderful for the price! We don't do the drive through tour. We just do the walking tour, the rides in carousel gardens, and stroll through Storyland. We LOVE it! It's gone up a little in price since we started going, but still well woth the cost, in my view. It's super easy to buy tickets online. They're immediately available for scan at the gate via email link or by adding them to your Google or Apple wallet. Once you go in, most things are included in the entry price...a welcome surprise! There is no need to buy ride tickets. All of the rides (which are carnival-style) are included. You get unlimited hot chocolate and free marshmallows on skewers for roasting. There are s'mores kits available, too, for purchase if you want the graham crackers and chocolate. There is an indoor sit-down eatery on one side of carousel gardens and a little pizza shop with outdoor seating near the ferris wheel. The pizza is actually very tasty and well worth the inexpensive price tag. There are a couple of tents that sell alcoholic drinks but I haven't ever purchased those. We usually go the night it opens, so maybe the crowds fluctuate during the season, but night one almost always has light or moderate crowds. None of the ride waits are more than about 5 minutes except the ferris wheel, lady bug coaster, train, and carousel. Those have long lines, especially the ferris wheel which takes FOREVER. Honestly, I would never wait for that again. The swings, scrambler, bumper cars, fun slide, etc usually have short lines. The whole area is decked out with Chrismas lights, there's a big foam machine shooting "snow" into the air, and lovely Christmas tunes on speakers throughout carousel gardens. It's such a fun and joyful evening, and EASILY among my kids' favorite holiday traditions. If you find yourself in NOLA or the Northshore area during the holidays, do yourself and your family favor and stop in to soak in the joy of the Chrismas season.

Tons of fun, the train ride, the carousel, the gardens, gift shop, the cocktail bar, and food vendors. Weekends are crowded, so it's best to go during the week. Fun, fun, fun! Buy tickets online and arrive early for close parking. Buying the walking tour with the car tour was less expensive than buying just the walking tour.

This was not a bad celebration, but not the greatest as well. The main area is well lit and there were many little attractions. If you walk along the pathway, there is a little less lights. The place is pretty crowded during Christmas time and you have to wait in lines to play.

We have only been once and did the park itself not the driving portion. It was beautiful, plenty to see. We made s’mores, that did cost extra but only a couple of dollars. The kids rode rides, drinks were good! I would definitely do it again.

We are from Houston, this is so insane how we paid online and nearly everything was included!!!! The rides, the marshmallow toasting, the mountains of hot chocolate, seeing the massive train garden, so many beautiful lights. The cheeseburger was not good, but the pizza for $10 was hot and tasty! This would easily be nickeled and dimed into the ground if Houston got ahold of it.

$25 for value night was ok, would never pay $40 . For the amount of money, they are making off of this for an entire month, for years now, I cannot understand why there isn’t more done year to year with this park. There’s so much potential. It took less than 30 minutes to go through it. Your lantern sidewalk lights shine big bright white lights, totally take away from the ambience. Maybe some red and green in place of the bright white? Also, the big trucks and the new vehicles with the bright LED headlights that are blinding others takes away from the experience. We had to pull over to the side so that we can get behind those that had the bright LED lights. Maybe if you let people know to put on their yellow lights & turn off the headlights , It would help to enhance the scenes of the Christmas lights. Someone with artistic abilities really needs to get more creative with this Christmas light show. There are some pretty areas, but definitely not worth $40. We can’t keep blaming Katrina, that was 20 years ago. Value night at $25 wasn’t even sold out, that should be a clue!

They have a decent amount of lights, but to be honest, I feel like they could definitely have more for the price. It's hard to judge because I wasn't blown away by the experience, but I also wasn't fully disappointed. If you have kids or if you're into rides, i do feel like you get your money's worth because there's a good bit of rides. You get free hot chocolate at a few places. We did enjoy the train ride, though again, I do feel like more could be set up for that, but again, I'm not totally disappointed, it was just a cool experience. I do think it's worth seeing and experiencing at least once. This is for the walking tour, not the driving tour.

So disappointing. We drove all the way from the Northshore hoping to have a wonderful family night. We brought a drive through ticket for 7:45pm got there 40 minutes early. Everything was so unorganized. No clear direction to the entrance so we were driving around for at least a half hour. Finally found the entrance and the line was ridiculously long. No one there to direct traffic. We sat in line for over an hour and still never got to see the light. We left and went home. City Park needs to do better. A complete waste of time and money. We paid $44 bucks for nothing.