It’s time once again for Festival Transylvania, an evening of spooky fun and excitement, held at everyone’s favorite garden center in Salt Lake City: Millcreek Gardens. Plan to bring the family for some tame and heartwarming Halloween entertainment from Oct. 14 through Oct. 30.

Plenty of Halloween events here in Salt Lake City and across the country are created with the intention of terrifying spectators, but at Millcreek Gardens, our focus is on endearing family fun, not nightmares.

Outdoor Fall Fun

When you get tickets to Festival Transylvania, you can expect to spend about an hour walking through our Spook Alley — an interactive story walk — where your family can pass by pumpkins, a hay maze, and even a cemetery, and meet live characters! Keep your eye out for spiders, ghosts, skeletons, scarecrows, and Frankenstein! Past favorites have included the Magic Witch, X-Ray Nurse, Frankenstein’s Laboratory and the Glow Maze. This year, look for a funny fortune teller and a wacky laboratory experiment.

After you emerge from Spook Alley, stop at our Spooky Hollow Munchery, where you can buy treats such as cotton candy, cookies and hot chocolate. Most treats are only $1 each!

Download our coloring page for the kids — have them bring their colored picture with them and they can trade it in for a Transylvania Buck, redeemable for a snack at Spooky Hollow Munchery.

A Safe Outing

Kids — and adults — have missed out on a lot of fun since the pandemic hit. Trick-or-treating was sidelined in some areas, as was most any type of gathering. At Millcreek Gardens, we’re excited to be able to offer Salt Lake City-area families a chance to get out of the house and experience a little holiday fun without any risks. We hope you’ll take advantage of our outdoor location and stop by for a cup of hot chocolate and some needed enjoyment with the family.

We love having the opportunity to extend the season at our garden center. The end of the hot summer season means gardening chores ramp down, and turn from mulching and watering to raking and pulling up old brown plants.

We know some of our customers are still harvesting pumpkins and squash as well as enjoying cool-weather favorites like mums and marigolds. This is the time to use your garden for decorating inspiration, incorporating squashes, old corn stalks, colored leaves, acorns, and more into fun fall decorations for the yard or indoors.

Stop by After Dark

Festival Transylvania, held at Millcreek Gardens, 3500 S 900 E, Millcreek, is open weekdays from 6:30 to 8 p.m. and weekends from 6 to 9 p.m.; closed Tuesdays and Sundays. Tickets have timed entries to avoid crowding — please practice social distancing. Tickets — available online or at the door — are $6 weekdays, $8 weekends; children under 2 get in free.