Holiday Wonder

Holiday Wonder definitely let us down. The light display is only on the children's playground part for the State Fair. You can walk through the display in 10 minutes. There is a inflatable slide and snowball throwing, that cost an couple of dollars extra. The food section is limited and only one booth. It's not worth the $20 admission price but if you get the Groupon it's not half bad. Also they do offer a 40% military discount. Overall the event seem rushed and an afterthought. There's caution tape around the light displays, which takes away from the limited displays they have and your ability to take a nice family picture. It just doesn't live up to the Fair Park event; i.e State Fair, Earth Day, or Taste of Dallas.

We spent around 45 min here....without using the slide cause the line was long. We watched 10 min of acrobats cause we came late and didn't want to wait for the next one. So if you watch the acrobat from start to finish and use the slide, the whole experience will be around 1 hour.Lanterns were beautifully made. I wonder how they held all the cloths together. Saw some caution tape around some displays, but none on others. We came a few years ago to a similar event (also held at Fair Parks) which had twice as many lanterns and they erected a huge, tall Chinese plate-and-spoon pagoda (really impressive). They didn't have that many food stalls back then, and also sold Chinese crafts (which had nothing to do with Christmas). So we weren't surprised to see this time around, there were only 2 food stalls and saw plenty of Chinese crafts booths. No kid's slide back then.If you are new to Fair Parks, you'd be shocked to pay $10 parking fee. But I've been to a couple events there and $10 is the norm.Although this event didn't have as many lanterns as back then (3-4 years ago), I think from safety perspective, this event was better. A major complaint from 3-4 years ago, was that lots of electrical cables were exposed and they were major safety hazards.

This was an interesting experience to say the least. The light displays were really cute but you can view most of them fairly quickly. My favorite one was the swans in the middle of the lake. The big Dallas skyline is very pretty too. The snowflake hall definitely looks better in the pictures than it does in real life. The snowballs are to be thrown at a board with pictures on it (no one was doing it when we were there) and not to be thrown at others (aw come on!!). The sled slide was pretty neat and included with our ticket. The oddest thing was the shops, concession booth and the acrobat show. NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH IT BUT... okay, the shops were a few shabby booths with a bunch of Asian goods. Some of the items were overpriced. 20 bucks for a cheap panda piggy bank? 5 dollars for a flimsy wind up frog? (Okay I bought that one to freak our cat out so they got me there) Some of the other items for sale were Asian themed bookmarks, paintings, statuettes, ornaments, coin purses, yeahhh basically very little to do with Christmas. The concessions were just two sad lonely booths. One had your average fair type foods like burgers, chips, soda, etc. The other booth had... Asian food!! Fried rice bowls, Chinese dumplings, etc. Like I said nothing against it but it seemed strangely out of character for Christmas, haha. The acrobatic show was frickin' hilarious. Like, unintentionally hilarious. The first act was an Asian guy dressed in, I wanna say, Asian performing garb(?) doing neat tricks that consisted of him balancing a pot and tossing it around. The second act was two young guys juggling. Kinda neat, they dropped their batons a few times though. The third act was hilariously weird. Two dudes dressed as clowns ran around the crowd giving away balloons while the same 3 minute song played OVER AND OVER AND OVER ("kissy kissy" by smile dk, yes I looked it up so I could bother my boyfriend with it later). The last couple acts was some guys doing a cirque de soleil type performance. As interesting and funny as these performances were, NONE OF THEM HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH CHRISTMAS. The couple behind us was crying with laughter (we were too) at the performances. I read that the full priced tickets were 20 bucks coupled with 10 bucks for parking and anything you plan to buy in there, you REALLY gotta consider going to this. It was a very small event. Consider getting the groupon ticket special!!!

This place was pathetic. It was way overpriced and literally just a small circle around the pond. There were very little lights and they could have been done so much better. I think we were there for less than half an hour. Even my friend said it was terrible.

I went to this in Houston December 1, put on by the same Chinese company. Nowadays "Made in China" often means great quality, but in this case all the light displays are really cheap looking when up close. I have been to much better ones in South Korea. I walked through the Houston one in about 10 minutes and found not a single display that impressed. On the other hand, the acrobatic show, put on by about six women, was impressive, especially one lying on her back with her feet up holding a table, which she could spin. So if you do go, definitely watch the Chinese acrobatic display, and consider the light displays free, which is about they are worth.