Bought five tickets ($183.42, 4 adults, 1 youth) for the Idaho Falls, Idaho Water Lantern Festival…read moreJune 17, 2023. It was held at a small man-made pond in the Snake River Landing area.
The event boasted 'early bird pricing' with a deadline when the ticket prices would go up. But for weeks, they just extended the deadline, never actually raising prices, so I'm guessing our 'early bird pricing' was just the regular ticket price. Even with this scam of a 'deal' you can see the tickets were still very expensive at almost $200.
Each adult ticket was $26.98 and had an additional $5.97 fee tacked on. The $12.45 youth ticket had a $2.98 fee tacked on. When I purchased tickets, it didn't sound like the youth ticket included a lantern kit, so I paid $19.99 for an additional lantern kit, but didn't end up needing it and could not get a refund.
Finally, an additional $16.20 was tacked on at the end for facility fees and taxes for the grand total of $183.42.
I'm not sure what the facility fee was for, the event was held in an open park and most people parked on the street.
From their ticketing page: "Each adult ticket includes a wristband for entry into the festival area with access to food trucks, one floating lantern kit, marker, drawstring bag, playing cards, conversation cards, and scavenger hunt giveaway entry."
Youth tickets include the same kit, but a kid ticket (ages 0-7) do not include a lantern kit. However, as stated, the lantern kits alone are $19.99 so it would be cheaper to buy your kids ages 0-7 a youth ticket, even with the fee.
The floating lantern kits were nice. Cheap, but nice. Easy to put together and we appreciated the included pink marker. The pink color dried nicely on the absorbent paper and glowed prettily with the included battery powered candle. If we'd brought our own markers, the designs would have been darker and less illuminated once lit.
The drawstring bag is handy, but cheap trash. We didn't need 5 sets of playing cards or 5 sets of conversation cards, and the scavenger hunt giveaway just looks like a scammy way for the organization to collect a host of email addresses; we did not enter.
The wristbands don't do a thing; no one checks them, and because the event is held in an open park space, anyone could have walked in and accessed the food trucks (of which there were only three(!), each with mile-long lines). When you check in, a teenager scans your ticket and then another teenager counted out the kit bags for us. No one did any checking to see what package or add-ons we might have purchased (you can add on blankets, glow sticks, etc, for an additional fee.) No one told us a $4 coupon for merchandise was in each bag, so when we bought their overpriced medallion blankets (very, very thin) we cold have saved some pennies.
In reality, someone could purchase their own, much cheaper lantern kit, and just show up and participate. Absolutely no one would notice or care.
The event started at 6pm, with lantern decorating and lantern stories happening around 8, then launching from 9:00 - 10:00pm. We showed up at 7:30pm anticipating crowds and parking issues, but there weren't any. Compared to our annual 4th of July celebration, this was only a fraction of that enormous crowd. We thought there would be vendors to see and things to do. There were vendors but they were very random and nothing my kids were interested in. There were no bounce houses or any activities that made our exorbitant ticket prices feel worthwhile. If there were lawn games going on, they weren't labeled and had no organizers.
The only official Water Festival people we saw were at the check-in and merchandising tents.
Though the descriptions said 'live music' there was no band. There was a big DJ set up and the music was nice. The sound system was not loud enough to hear the lantern stories at the other end of the pond though.
We ended up spreading out their thin blankets and decorating our lanterns, which was a nice family activity. But then we had an hour to wait and didn't want to fight for a spot in the meager food truck options, so we left. We went into Idaho Falls and got food at a couple different places, and drove back in time to launch our lanterns with everyone else.
The actual lantern launching was nice. The wind was going, so everyone needed to go to the south end of the pond. I'm not sure how they managed the crowd or the launching as we came back near the end.
The lanterns look pretty and the music is nice. I'd go again, but I wouldn't pay this much and I wouldn't buy any of their merch. I'd bring a picnic and our own games to play and come closer to nightfall.
If they are able to get more vendors and more food trucks and could set up some activities for kids, the ticket price would feel more worth it. It's overall such a nice idea.
The festival claims they support a charity that supplies water to needed areas, but there's no info given and no transparency re: a for profit event.
