Riverside’s 30th Festival of Lights

The Festival of Lights held in Riverside by The Mission Inn Hotel and Spa makes it to various lists and for good reason. It’s free and it’s pretty. Since I’d been there before, I was heavily contemplating on whether I should bother with going there again. Well, in the end, I decided to just go to the event because it’d been a while.

Going the day after Thanksgiving was a very bright thing to do. Traffic was smooth sailing until I got off to find parking for the Festival of Lights. I guess it didn’t help much either that this was the first day of the festival, which meant that there would be more people than normal attending the event.

Everything was fine and dandy once I found parking in the midst of crazy drivers. (I must share that the guy in front of me kept releasing his brakes only to reverse severely close to my car. I had so many wtf moments with this guy and am so glad he ended up not parking in the same lot as me.)

I could have gotten parking a lot earlier had I not fret so much on how far my parking would be. The thing is the event is not just at The Mission Inn, which means that the chances of you parking exactly where the event is at are high. Like, very high.

I can’t tell you how pleasantly surprised I was to learn that I had parked where the event was despite thinking I was too far from The Mission Inn. Either way, it would have been quite impossible to try to get parking at The Mission Inn or the Riverside Convention Center since those spots were probably taken many hours before I had even arrived to Riverside.

Anyway, my original goal was to visit the Riverside Convention Center first since I didn’t feel like attending the switch on ceremony. I’m just being honest here, especially since I’ve attended their switch on ceremony before in the past. I knew it would be extra crowded and just didn’t want to deal with that. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even get near the ceremony area where a wall was formed by people. I had to take a hefty detour in order to get away from the crowds. By then, the fireworks had started and I was able to enjoy it from a distance.

The fireworks were eventful. Not just because they were pretty but because there was a glitch in their performance. At one point, it seemed like the fireworks had stalled. I didn’t realize it then but something apparently had happened “thanks” to the fireworks.

Some time after the fireworks had ended, I could smell fire. I learned a lot later in the night that the fireworks had apparently caused a fire at The Mission Inn and that was the reason why people weren’t allowed to go here and there that much.

Bummer, right? Yeah. No one was able to go check the inside lights. I did see a line somewhere and am unsure if anyone managed to at least get inside the restaurant area of The Mission Inn but I doubt it.

I was thinking of getting a chocolate cupcake for myself but trashed that thought for not wanting to deal with the hassle of figuring out how to get through. It’s just a cupcake and it’s not good for you, anyway, right?

So, I only enjoyed the exterior of things and called it a night pretty fast. I suppose it worked out in the end, since I wasn’t planning on staying too long, anyway.

Even my visit to the Festival of Trees was rather quick.

I didn’t buy anything but a tamale and despite it being good, the customer service was rather lacking.

All in all, it was an event to experience holiday cheer that to me felt somewhat absent of holiday cheer. It makes sense, though since we are still living in crazy times: COVID and inflation (possible recession). I think what really got to me was the lack of cheer I saw in some of the workers who weren’t exactly a part of the Festival of Lights team but were a sore sight to see anyway. It just made me think I don’t want to bother with the event again. Of course, I do have guests expected to come and might be tempted to just bring them to this holiday event, but we’ll see…

**Click HERE to watch my video of the Festival of Lights!**