Luminaria

I’m all about events that make you appreciate winter which for this city is needed. However, I cannot endorse this event for a number of reasons.
1. Parking. Save yourself the trouble of turning into the Devonian gardens because you will be escorted to the exit sign where a lovely young lady will tell you to go to Devon for the shuttle. I wouldn’t mind that if it didn’t take 15 mins of nervously coordinated traffic and a line up on the turn into the garden to tell me this is the case. Could there have been an indication that the parking is full thus saving lots of nervous and angry visitors tons of time? I think so!
2. Shuttle. 3 shuttle buses driving people back and forth and a line so large you’d swear it was to visit William and Kate. This means waiting in line (including for buses going to the Devonian and coming back) about 90 minutes (for me). Hope you brought your heavy duty gloves and arctic boots! And was it worth it …
3. NO! NOT WORTH THE 30 MINUTE DRIVE TO DEVONIAN, 15MINUTE WAIT TO TURN INTO THE GARDENS ONLY TO BE TOLD TO GO TO DEVON FOR THE SHUTTLE, 90 MINUTE WAIT IN LINE TO BOARD THE SHUTTLE FOR ONLY A 30 MINUTE WALK AROUND THE GARDENS, WHITE BAGS WITH CANDLES IN THEM TO REPRESENT LOST LOVED ONES, WEIRD SPRITES GIVING CANDY CANES, INSUFFICIENT AMOUNT OF FIRES TO WARM VISITORS. There I’ve saved you time and money! In my opinion, not worth it!
4. Lots of families. I was expecting it to be a lot more romantic. However, there are a lot of families with kidlettes running everywhere. There is nothing wrong with this, but just know that going in. It’s probably more family focused in my opinion.
I think the organizers failed heavily in the planning of the event. When the wait is 4 times greater than the activity something is wrong!

Don’t waste your time!
We prepurchased tickets on line for this event and were really looking forward to it. Took tripod and camera and drove an hour to get there. Bad sign when we see big line up on highway to turn into gardens. Worse yet– big line of cars going out of gardens. tho they had attendants at the parking entry– no one came to tell this line up of cars that there was no where to park and we would be turned away.
(no need to wait half hour in line to find that out.). S o –get to the parking lot– turned away down a different road– and only then do they tell you now you have to drive to devon and take a bus etc if you want to go to show. This was obviously going to be a gong show– the huge lineup of cars both trying to come in and leaving the area was going to make those bus lineups just as absurd.
They know how many tickets they sell and how big the parking lots are– and shouldn’t presell tickets to folks if they are not told they will arrive, wait in line half hour and then be told to drive elsewhere and take a bus. If they sold limited tickets for certain times (for those who wanted) on Sat or Sun (not just a free for all) this would be much more efficient. Or tell people up front that they will need to go to Devon and take a bus.
Anyways– had we known– we would never have pre bought tickets (useless now) and wasted our Sat evening driving there and back and sitting in lineups on the highway.

Luminaria is an annual holiday event at the Devonian Botanical Gardens, located north of Devon on highway 60. It runs for one weekend in December, and features the Japanese gardens lit up with over 1700 candles. I struggled with the star rating for this event. Two stars seems too low, but the description of «Meh. I’ve experienced better.» really sums up how I felt about the evening.
To start, I’d recommend going early to get parking. There are park and ride facilities available from the Devon townsite, but we arrived 10 minutes prior to opening to get a great spot in the garden parking lot. There isn’t a lot of parking though, I can understand the need for the park and ride if you are going later. All of the pathways around the Japanese garden are lit with candles, and they were beautiful flickering in the dark. There are also a number of ice sculptures placed around the garden, as well as fire pits and stations with free hot apple cider.
My experience my have been biased because of the cold temperatures during our visit, but I felt like there wasn’t much of anything to see or do at Luminaria. There was supposed to be a group moving around singing Christmas carols, but they didn’t appear at any point during our visit. We slowly walked all the paths in about 20 minutes, and I had a hard time enjoying how peaceful and pretty it should be because of the throngs of people everywhere. The other three people I went with enjoyed the evening, but compared to other holiday activities available in Edmonton, this one really fell short for me.