Last fall, my boyfriend, sister, and I went to Lantern Fest. It travels all over but we went to the one in the Poconos.
When we pulled up there was a very long line to get in that seemed to take forever but in reality I don’t remember how long it took to get in, definitely over an hour. The parking lot was enormous and went on forever but somehow we lucked out and got a spot right by the entrance.
I ordered an extra box of lanterns for each of us so we had 6 lanterns for the three of us. The box was super cute and came with a Smore’s kit and lighter.
When checking in they were handing out glow sticks. The boxes of glow sticks were just in the road where everyone was walking. I tripped over the box so hard and kicked glow sticks everywhere. Not embarrassing at all….thanks. Off to a good start!
As it turns out, we were not prepared for this lantern festival in the slightest. We didn’t realize that we should have brought chairs or a sheet or blanket to sit on. We didn’t realize it was going to be so cold and should have brought coats and blankets. We also didn’t realize that we should have gotten a spot right next to a fire pit.
Even though we weren’t prepared at all we lucked out a bit. We just so happened to have tarps in the trunk which we got to sit on. Not so comfy but better than the cold, wet grass. We also had a bunch of random sweaters and jackets in the car. We put them all on! It was so cold! Everyone was very possessive over their fire pits. We were visibly shaking so finally someone took pity on us and invited us to sit next to their fire pit.
The lantern fest was not well organized at all. We didn’t know you had to take a paper from under your fire pit and bring it over to get wood. There were no instructions whatsoever that said this. Everyone was sitting around waiting for someone to bring us the wood because that’s what the paper in our box said but that wasn’t true.
Also they kept making the announcement that we weren’t allowed to send up the lanterns yet but no one could hear so randomly a few went up here and there. Then when they finally did announce they could all go up, no one heard. Then a whole bunch went up and they went in waves because we couldn’t hear a damn thing.
It didn’t matter that we had 6 lanterns because we couldn’t get the damn things up. And we weren’t the only ones. No one could seem to get the lanterns up. Everyone was having a pretty hard time.
I eventually gave up on trying to send them up and just focused on watching them and taking videos and pictures. My boyfriend though, he’s a trooper and refused to give up. My sister was his sidekick but I couldn’t be bothered.
Dionna and Mark finally getting the hang of the lanterns!
Mark got the hang of it so well that a ton of people were coming to him for help. He spent the whole night getting people’s lanterns ready for takeoff for them.
You can hear in the background that a man asks how Mark got the lantern up!
Whenever someone got a lantern up we would all laugh and scream with joy for each other! Listen to the excitement in this man’s voice when he screams, “WE DID IT!” and everyone cheer! It was really hysterical.
The sweetest, most adorable moment happened towards the end of the night when an older woman came over and asked if he could help her and her friend. She explained that her friend really wanted to set one off but they couldn’t do it and their lanterns were burned. Her friend was so upset, she said she was going to cry. Mark tried to send their lanterns up but they were too burned. They were garbage. We had 6 so he gave one to them. He got it ready for take off and gave it to them to send up. The ladies set it off in the air together. The elderly lady grasped onto him, hugging him. She told him how much it meant to her and that he made her whole night. She cried and the other woman was teary eyed. We could tell that the lantern was of some significance to them. It was so stinking cute and precious.
Though absolutely beautiful, these lanterns are quite a hazard. They were flying wild. If you didn’t get it up in the air then they flew right at you, one got hooked onto a baby stroller. Everyone was flipping out and trying to get it off. Luckily there wasn’t a baby in it.
Also, the lanterns themselves would sometimes light on fire and you would have to stomp on it to put it out! Many lanterns were destroyed that night.
I myself and many others got hit in the head with lanterns. The whole time you would hear, “Look out!”, “Watch out!”, “Duck!”
My sister met us at the lanterns fest so we took two separate cars. At the end of the night we walked her to hers and then went to ours. Everyone seemed to be driving in one direction to get out. There were hundreds of cars creeping their way to the exit. There was a random open fence near our car so we decided to go through it and see what would happen. It was kind of covered with bushes and not lit at all so it wasn’t noticeable to anyone. Well this was the best decision we made because it led us right to the road. We got home an hour and a half later and my sister was STILL IN THE PARKING LOT! I couldn’t believe it. She said no cars were moving at all and there was no where to move! We told her about the fence but the parking lot was so crowded that she couldn’t move her car at all.
All in all, we loved it- unfortunate events and all. It was a lot of fun and beautiful and we had a lot of laughs., mostly because of the unfortunate events. I recommend going to this event but go more prepared than we did!
Have you been to Lantern Fest? If so what did you think?