{"id":1608,"date":"2012-12-29T22:01:07","date_gmt":"2012-12-30T03:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/?p=1608"},"modified":"2013-11-30T23:09:29","modified_gmt":"2013-12-01T04:09:29","slug":"alabama-discoveries-4-bellingrath-gardens-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2012\/12\/alabama-discoveries-4-bellingrath-gardens-christmas.html","title":{"rendered":"Alabama Discoveries 4: Bellingrath Gardens Magic Christmas in Lights<\/em> (Includes Visit Tips)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Magic of Christmas light show at Bellingrath Gardens near Mobile, Alabama draws hundreds of thousands of visitors every holiday season. Our family really enjoyed it.<\/p><\/div>\n

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while, but before I knew it, Christmas got a bit overwhelming.\u00a0 Since there are still several days to enjoy the light show, I will try to get this post out there before their last weekend so people can try to fit it into their New Year’s plans.<\/p>\n

Bellingrath Gardens and Home<\/a> is a 65-acre property just southwest of Mobile, Alabama. The holiday light show, called Magic Christmas in Lights,\u00a0<\/em>which started in 1995, has become very popular and draws visitors from throughout the Gulf Coast.<\/p>\n

Dave asks me around Thanksgiving every year, “What do you want for Christmas?” And I usually come up with something unusual, such as “I would like you to arrange a family trip to Bellingrath Gardens in December.”<\/p>\n

Of course, he had to go do all the research: What is it? Why does Patricia want to go to a botanical garden in December? How much do the tickets cost? Do I need to get the tickets ahead of time?<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m usually the one who does the travel planning in the family: I make the airfare, hotel, rental car arrangements, I am the one who does the route planning ahead of time. I don’t mind, really. But for Dave to take the reigns on travel planning is a real treat.<\/p>\n

Dave got us internet tickets for December 8th, a Saturday night. The hours for the event are 5-9pm, and I will explain in a minute why it’s important to arrive at 5pm. We took our time getting to the gardens, stopping at Lambert’s Cafe in Foley, as well as a brief trip to the Wales West Tourist Railroad to see the holiday decorations there also.<\/p>\n

So our plan was to arrive at about 6pm. There was an accident on Bellingrath Road, which is the 8-mile two-lane county road that leads everyone to the gardens. So we sat in VERY slow moving traffic for over 90 minutes…and didn’t get into the gardens themselves into 7:30pm.<\/p>\n

I was in a tizzy about it — I didn’t know how big the light display was, and I was panicking about only having 90 minutes to try to see everything! \u00a0Yikes!<\/p>\n

Well, it was all well, even with the crowds (and it’s VERY crowded on the weekends in December, be prepared to walk SLOWLY) it took the family about 75 minutes to slowly walk the pre-arranged route through the assorted light displays. We also found out that the accident delayed so many guests, the gardens would stay open past 9pm to accomodate everyone. \u00a0Cars were till entering when we left right at 9pm.<\/p>\n

The lights are certainly worth the cost and the distance traveled! With over 3 million lights in over a dozen different themes (such as aquatic, polar bears, flowers, toys, and woodland animals), your eyes will be in for quite a delight!<\/p>\n

Before I show some pictures, here are some tips to make your visit more enjoyable.<\/p>\n