As the sun lowers across the city of Grand Rapids and the late night stresses of impending assignments for college students cease, John Ball Zoo remains a light in the darkness while summer comes into full swing. Although the city’s illumination remains beautiful at night, the Grand Rapids Lantern Festival offers an experience much more enriching than just any old apartment lights.
Continuing until June 15, the Lantern Festival offers tickets Wednesday through Sunday from 7:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. for people of all ages to experience floral, animal and art structures that light a path through the zoo. Now in its third year of operation, the zoo staff hopes to entertain close to the same number of guests as last year’s event, which drew about 175,000 people throughout the 10 weeks of operation.
Each year, the theme of the lantern festival changes, with hopes that more people will come to the zoo and learn about their mission of conservation education and work that takes place.
Promotions and Events Manager for John Ball Zoo, Darci Mitchell, shared what it takes to run an event like this.
“The process starts by evaluating the festival once it has ended, and then brainstorming with the Zoo team and our lantern festival partners, Tianyu (Tianyu Arts and Culture), to come up with new themes and ideas for the next year,” Mitchell wrote in an email to The Collegiate. “Set up takes about six weeks. The first week just consists of 10-12 semi trucks coming in and being unloaded. From there, we finalize all lantern placement and then start transferring the lanterns into the Zoo for installation. It takes about 15-20 Tianyu staff and multiple Zoo employees to complete all aspects of the setup for the event.”
The company that designs and sets up the structures, Tianyu Arts and Culture, is based out of China and is the largest Chinese lantern festival producer in North America. They provide designs for cities all over the United States similar to the John Ball exhibit.
Peter Huschilt, who moved from Canada 30 years prior, started working at the zoo in April and shared his thoughts on the wonders of the event.
“I think it’s amazing, and we are getting people from all over. It’s so good to be out in the open with the animals and the Chinese decorations,” he said. “(The guests) all love it. They are just enamored by the lights and the interactive things that are going on here.”
When asked what she recommended for visitors interested in the event, Mitchell stated that planning ahead was key. Buying tickets online beforehand was the best way to ensure you could get in before they sell out, due to their timed ticketing system.
Built to spread out the amount of people entering, tickets can be bought in 30 minute intervals, but once in, you can spend as much time as needed to experience the event. Going on weekdays was also recommended, as they tend to be less busy.
“Rainy nights are also surprisingly enjoyable since the lanterns and lights reflect off of the water and make for a really beautiful experience,” Mitchell wrote. “Make sure you catch our nightly cultural performances that happen three times a night at 8:15 p.m., 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. up at our Forest Realm Stage.”
The rainy nights are not the only thing Mitchell loves about the lantern festival.
“My favorite part of the Lantern Festival is that it really is a fantastic event for all ages. I see young families and kids, senior groups, teens, first dates, etc. all coming through the event,” she wrote in her email. “It appeals to all ages and it’s really fun to see everyone acting like a kid again, playing, and interacting with the lanterns with big smiles on their faces. It feels like a unique spot for everyone to come and really let loose and enjoy themselves.”
Joseph Yang, president of the Boys and Girls Club in Lansing, Michigan, who attended the Lantern Festival, agreed on the amazing impact this event could motivate.
“It is a beautiful event and we are having a great time. We were just talking earlier about how it would be great to expose our kids to this type of event and have them come out and just enjoy the festivities and just be part of the community,” Yang said. “Sometimes, just allowing kids to see something that they don’t normally see could inspire them and spark something inside of them.”
The Lantern Festival holds an importance beyond the lights that have been shining every night since April— the kid-joy that brings adults out of their own worlds, inspiration for children that nothing is impossible and John Ball Zoo’s mission of saving wildlife.
“The Lantern Festival really celebrates the cross section between wildlife and Asian culture,” Mitchell stated. “There are so many things that intertwine, and it’s really important to celebrate our community. I really hope that people who come to the lantern festival walk away learning something new, either about Asian culture or about the mission of the Zoo, which is saving wildlife and wild places. There is so much conservation work that is done here and coming to the lantern festival helps support that. I hope that people get inspired to make small changes in their everyday lives that can help conservation, or that they feel inspired to come back to the zoo for other events and daily activities. Every visit helps support our work!”
