No Glow This Christmas - A Disappointed Review

You guys, I really wanted to love Glow.  I am the biggest sucker on the planet for pretty Christmas lights, and the fact that it is all happening indoors is very appealing to me and my aversion of cold.

However, I didn't love Glow, and in fact, I am supremely regretting the already-discounted $56 (and $20 in parking) that we paid for the 30 minutes of "entertainment" we received.  They advertise themselves as an indoor festival and market, but I would dispute those claims.

So let's start with the venue access.  The Glow Vancouver event is being held at the Harbour Convention Centre, formerly known as the EdgeWater Casino.  It's located just off Pacific Boulevard, and a good amount of the parking is fenced off for the Cirque de Soleil event happening in the next lot.  As a result, the blink-and-you'll-miss-it parking entrance is very confusing to find, and the most accessible parkade once you pull into the entrance area is at the 750 Pacific Blvd building just across the way from Glow.

Now, let me tell you about this super close parkade.  It's dingy, poorly-lit, and possibly under renovation.  It is also $20 to park there, whether you stay for 30 minutes or 3 hours.  The elevator in the "orange area" of the parkade is also out of commission, so if you have mobility issues, you have to find your way to the "blue area" elevator to reach the main floor.  The handwritten signs taped onto the elevator doors and above the buttons also give the parkade an extra creepy vibe, and the other folks riding with us actually mentioned that they felt unsafe leaving their vehicle there.  Every single person riding that lone elevator from P1 to Main also had no idea where we were supposed to go.  Signage for the event and for this parkade are desperately lacking, and confusion is an understandable result.

Pro tip: If you park at 750 Pacific Blvd, you have to get off at Main and exit the parkade building's doors.  Then you will see Glow across the parking lot.

To be fair, the Glow organizers did actually recommend that we park at Parq Vancouver, but that parkade was even further away (across a major thoroughfare) and potentially just as pricey, since the Parq is a very fancy schmancy casino and entertainment Mecca.  With Little L, we decided that the closer we could get to the venue, the better for all of us.

Anyway, after finally finding our way into the building (and leading our elevator friends with us), we were greeted by some eager staffers handing out scavenger hunt booklets to the littles.  We chose not to participate, but wondered what the "prize" for collecting all of the stamps might be.  It was hard to tell who exactly was in charge of giving out these stamps, as none of this was made clear to us, and aside from a costumed Belle (as in Disney's Beauty and the Beast Belle) wandering near the lit up castle, we really couldn't tell where these stamp-doling floor staff were located.

The lights at Glow are beautiful, to be sure.  Lots of places to sit, and to take IG-worthy selfies.  And if you're on a date, I would say it's a pretty romantic venue, as well as a good one for picking up some adult drinks, judging by the several bars that I passed by.

]

But overall, the venue is small, and so the displays are not as extensive as what we saw at the Chinese Lantern Festival a few years back, or even relative to  the Festival of Trees, or Bright Nights at Stanley Park.  And yet - the tickets are much more expensive than Bright Nights (which is by donation) and even pricier than Van Dusen's extensive light show ($21 at Festival of Lights, vs $23 on weekends at Glow).

There is only one small elevator for mobility-challenged guests to use, and the escalators are either out of service or turned off, so the upstairs floor (which is unusually warm, by the way) is only accessible by that little elevator, if you aren't great with hoofing up a stationary escalator.

Besides the Scavenger Hunt, Glow offers kids lit-up swings, a mini-playground, some bouncy reindeer, a mini-train, an illuminated dance (hopscotch?) floor, and some giant stuffed teddy bears to play on.  We didn't stop for colouring, but I think there is a colouring and craft station upstairs as well.  And of course, anyone who's a big Santa fan can visit the jolly ol' elf and (not) sit on his lap.  There are also displays you can walk into, or sit on (like a giant lit up sleigh), a small food vendor area, a small kiosk-style "market" on the second floor, and a movie theatre that plays a 10-minute Glow film in a quiet, air-conditioned room on the second floor.  The most appealing part for us was probably the "icicles" area that you can walk through; Little L enjoyed the sounds of those lit up tubes tinkling against each other as she moved through that area.

I really wanted to love Glow, but it was simply not engaging for Little L or Hubbs; we literally just walked around long enough to take a few photos and justify our ticket costs, and then we left.  Maybe there is some secret fun area that we missed, and we definitely didn't look around for those advertised food vendors that they listed on their site, but for us, the entire expensive excursion was simply not worth the money.  It didn't feel like a festival, and it didn't feel like a market.  To be honest, I would sooner have paid the same dollars to attend some other local Christmas event, many of which are less costly and offer a higher return on investment.

This is only the 3rd year of Glow, which started in 2017.  Maybe they're still working out the kinks this year, but I'm hard-pressed to imagine how they could improve unless they made Glow into something entirely different, and changed the venue to a more sizeable arena.  At present, however, Glow Gardens is less an indoor festival and market as it is an elaborate light display with a few interactive elements.  While great for a date night or maybe a daytime sensory experience for those who are drawn to little lights, it just isn't my kind of Christmas event.