How many cars can Canyon View Park handle on a December night before the line backs up onto Canyon Road? Spanish Fork has collected more than three decades of answers to that question. Last season the city decided the honest answer was "fewer than we've been letting in."
The Festival of Lights opens for its 34th season on Thanksgiving, which falls on November 26 this year. It will look like the drive-through you already know: archways, animals and rope-light scenes along the park road, 6 to 10 p.m. every night through New Year's Day. What changed is everything that happens before your headlights reach the first display. Those changes come from a specific decision the city made about crowd size, and it's spelled out in Spanish Fork City Council minutes.
The Line Used to Be the Event
For years the hard part of the Festival of Lights was getting in. When the Daily Herald covered the 2024 opening, special events supervisor Emily Harryman put the average at about 20,000 cars a year. Many come from town, some are passing through on U.S. Highway 6, and tour buses and senior facilities drive through too. In the same story, Parks and Recreation Director Dale Robinson said the goal of the new reservation system was to break attendance into sessions so "you don't have to wait for two hours."
That 2024 season was the first with advance tickets, and it was a halfway step. You could reserve online for $10 per family vehicle or pay $15 at the gate and take your chances. Crowds kept coming. In his January 2025 review to the City Council, Robinson called it a record year: more than 1,000 cars on three separate nights and nearly 20,000 cars for the season. He also listed the problems, including confusion from social media misinformation and a box office still dealing with last-minute sales. He said attendance needed to be spread more evenly across time slots.
The City Picked a Number Below Its Record
For 2025 the city stopped trying to absorb peak nights and started preventing them. Harryman told the council in November 2025 that ticketing would be fully online. The city moved to a new platform, Stride Events, but kept the familiar sfcitytix.com address. Each half-hour window held 100 vehicles, with eight windows a night. That comes to about 800 cars a night.
Councilman Kevin Oyler noted that peak nights in earlier years had gone past 1,000 vehicles. City Manager Seth Perrins said the highest recent night was around 1,090. Perrins then explained that staff wanted to avoid 1,000-car nights altogether because they caused safety and traffic problems. Staff watched backups on Google Maps, and the main goal was keeping traffic off Canyon Road. The draft minutes from that November 18, 2025 meeting describe the new nightly cap as spreading cars across the full 6-to-10 p.m. window instead of letting them arrive in surges.
The ticket booth moved as well. It now sits in front of the Oaks Event Center near the putting green, so drivers without a ticket can leave the line, buy one, and get back in properly. The ticket site also added a feature that flags peak nights with longer waits. Harryman used Christmas Eve as her example.
Here's how the two seasons compare, using the city's own numbers:
| 2024 season | 2025 season | |
|---|---|---|
| Ticketing | First year of online reservations; $15 gate option | Fully online, booth relocated to the Oaks Event Center |
| Nightly plan | No stated cap | 8 windows of 100 cars, about 800 |
| Total cars | Nearly 20,000 | Slightly over 18,100 |
| Biggest nights | More than 1,000 cars on three nights | Two sellouts at about 1,000 each |
| Where the line ended | Prior years often reached Canyon Road | Near the fire station townhomes at worst |
What Roughly 1,900 Fewer Cars Bought
The 2025 season brought in about 1,900 fewer cars than the year before. In the January 6, 2026 draft minutes, Robinson reported a final count just over 18,100. Perrins said the changes were to ticketing, not to the route. The displays you drove past were laid out the same way. The difference was how the cars got to them.
Perrins called the biggest improvement that the line never reached Canyon Road. In earlier years it often backed up that far even on nights with fewer cars. On the busiest 2025 nights it stopped near the fire station townhomes, short of any signalized intersection. Robinson said the longest queue was about half a mile and the longest wait was about 15 to 20 minutes, with many nights shorter than that.
So a smaller cap produced a better night, even with two nights still selling out at about 1,000 cars, close to the all-time high of about 1,079. The minutes don't explain how those nights went past the planned 800. Perrins did say same-day tickets were often still available, especially earlier in the evening.
Feedback from patrons had been overwhelmingly positive, with many expressing appreciation that the experience no longer consumed their entire evening.
That's how the January 2026 minutes summarize what Perrins told the council. Councilman Shane Marshall also suggested offering FitCity Center sign-ups at future festivals, given the crowds.
Your Ticket Time Is a Line Time
The whole system depends on one rule that's easy to miss. The city's Festival of Lights page says your window is when you get in line, not when you'll enter the park. Staff explained it in more detail at the November 2025 meeting, and that explanation is still the best guide for this season:
- Join the line at the start of your window. Harryman said a 6:00 p.m. reservation means getting in line at 6:00 or a few minutes before. If you're still in line at 6:20, you'll still get in.
- Don't come hours early. Perrins said a car with a 9:00 p.m. ticket that shows up at 6:30 will be asked to come back closer to its time. He compared it to a movie ticket for a later showing.
- Have your QR code ready at the booth so staff can scan it fast and keep the line moving.
- Buy early for peak nights. Oyler gave that advice himself. The site flags busy nights like Christmas Eve.
A few rules on the city page matter before you buy. Tickets are online only and the gate doesn't sell them. There are no refunds, but you can change your reservation through the original confirmation email before your time slot. The city no longer offers gift cards or certificates, so you can't give a festival visit as a stocking stuffer. The city page says tickets go on sale at sfcitytix.com on November 12. The ticketing site lists $10 for a single-family vehicle, $25 for a commercial van or a vehicle towing a trailer, and $50 for a bus. Some text on that ticketing page doesn't match the city's page, so check sfcitytix.com for the release date and the night you want.
The Crew That Starts in September
Each ticket covers months of work. According to the Daily Herald's 2024 story, maintenance crews start repairing rope lights in September while it's still warm. The park closes in October so the city can set up the structures, and staff keep swapping bulbs and making fixes right up to opening. Last November the council heard that about two dozen employees worked on setup. Harryman described bringing one of the tiger structures to the Harvest Moon event in September to show how aging structures get rewired. She said many of the kids wanted to touch it. Bronco Hunter thanked her crew and Janice Ottesen's, saying their hands would probably be numb until spring.
The park has a second project going on right now. The city drained the Canyon View Park pond in July for an upgrade that includes a deeper pond, new fish habitat, an aerator fountain, a longer dock and an ADA-accessible fishing platform. Excavation was scheduled for October, and docks, the ADA ramp and the boulder shoreline come in early 2027. The city expects to finish in April 2027.
If you'd rather see lights on foot, the Spanish Fork-Salem Chamber calendar lists the Winter Lights Parade for Saturday, November 28, from 6 to 7 p.m. That's two days after the festival opens.
At Bybee + Co Realty, our office is just up the road in Salem, and this festival is part of our neighbors' December too. If you're thinking about a home where a 15-minute wait for the lights at Canyon View Park is your idea of a holiday outing, contact us. We'll tell you plainly what that stretch of Spanish Fork offers.
