Fix the technological issue so that I can actually have the agency to choose the insurance on the tickets or not... read more

I think the event organizers were trying to have less disappointment if they could leave expectations open but it just made things worse - website said that the event on 5/24/24 would begin WITHIN 90 MINUTES of sunset (8:45) and be done by 10:30. OK, great. We arrived in plenty of time and waited...and waited...eventually they sent a message saying the lanterns would *hopefully* launch AFTER 1030. Why have people start showing up at 5 pm if the launch is so late? We threw in the towel, not knowing when (or if) they would launch after watching a couple of people try to unsuccessfully launch the lanterns just after 10 pm. At 10:30 on the dot as we were exiting the parking lot lanterns started going up. If you plan to launch at a specific time, let people know. It was frustrating not being told when the event was going to occur so we couldn't budget our time better and actually experience the event. :/ Super disappointing. read more

The Lantern Fest - Festivals Near Me - Salt Lake City, Utah

Canceled event "because of wind" even though the weather was fine outside. Thanks a lot we flew in from Florida to Salt Lake City just to see this. read more

Originally created to celebrate good fortune and those once loved. This eye opening spectacle will forever capture your wonder and deliver amazement at your fingertips. If you purchase your tickets way in advance you will receive an early bird discount. The tickets specifically recommend arriving at 4 p.m., not right before launch, yet crowds ignore this and accuse the organization for being unprepared when they have to wait in unnecessary lines. We, however, arrived just before the recommended hour and were directed seamlessly by staff where to park, check in, and grab our necessities. Once through the gates we located a fire pit and congregated there. Next we explored. We identified the numerous food trucks and decided to eat before the masses arrived. Thank goodness we had because once the majority checked in the lines to every truck became ridiculous. There were convenient food and drink sales reps for any evening craving walking about. Here are some suggestions when the time comes to launch: Be prepared so you can enjoy the spectacle in all its glory and snap a few pics in between. Keep your lantern low to the ground to allow the hot air to collimate within. And watch your head, some lanterns don't make it into the air and can burn your hair. Oh, and be patient when you leave. There are many vehicles and everyone is trying to leave just like yourself. read more

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My first time going to this I had no idea what to bring, what to plan on, or really what was happening at this event. Me and my boyfriend bought tickets early. They were 30$ each when I purchased. Plus they had a discount for Valentine's Day. It was buy 1 get one free. So this was a. Dry good deal! Well worth the money. We got to the festival too early. It said it started at 4, and because of missing an exit we got there around 5:30. We did have to park a ways away, however we didn't mind. It was 10$. They also had a little tram type of thing picking people up and bringing them to the entrance. Once we got in they gave us each a lantern, a roasting stick, and a box. The box came with a marker to draw or write on your lantern, a crappy lighter, 4 marshmallows, 8 graham crackers, and a Hershey's bar. We wish we would have brought a bigger bag, or maybe a baby and a stroller because carrying everything around was slightly inconvenient. Once we realized that there were no fire pits left to reserve we walked around. There were a couple cute little booths open, and some carnival games for kids. There were also some really good food trucks, however I assumed that it would have taken at least an hour to get food. The lines were so long. So luckily we brought food with us and just ate that. We had several hours that we spent walking in circles, because there really isn't too much for anyone our age to do. Then when the sun started to go down we looked for a spot to sit. It was so crazy busy and full, we had to wonder for a while. Eventually we came across this couple who only took up a little space and we sat by them. Eventually they offered us to join them. They had brought their own fire pit and let us share it! Several other couples joined us as well, and we meet some really cool people. We are still in touch with them now! After some s'more roasting and drawing on our lanterns it was time to release them. The lighters they give you aren't the best, but someone else in the group had their own. (thank god) we all struggled a little trying to get them to fly. Then someone told me to hold it low to the ground and let it fill up. Then soon enough it just floated up by itself. It was so cool! And so pretty. I definitely recommend this. The view was priceless. There is no picture that can do it justice. We planned on the parking lot being chaotic so we stayed by the fire and talked with our new friends for another hour and a half while people filed out. Once we walked back to our car we took an hour nap because the parking lot was so full. People waiting to get out just turned their cars off. We were expecting this - so it didn't make us too upset. After an hour of waiting we drove right out. Got home super late, but it was all worth it. You have to at least try it once. I doubt you'll be disappointed. read more

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The address on this seems wrong because the actual lantern festival is in Tooele at the Motorsports Arena. With that being said... the website and the pictures look correct, so here goes. Get there early! We waited in line in Tooele for at least an hour and a half to two hours to get into the festival parking lot. The mass amounts of people they support doesn't mesh well with farm country Tooele and it's tiny roads! Be forewarned and it'll be fine. Really cool they have any of these in America. My best friend went to Thailand for the Chinese New Year and got to see the authentic Chinese Lantern Festival. I gawk at the pictures. If you can't do that... or even if you can, I'd recommend adding this festival to your bucket list. They have vendors, bonfire pits, music and it is so much fun. read more

The Lantern Fest has been a terrible experience from start to finish -- horrible company, terrible event. We've emailed Lantern Fest customer support, messaged them on Facebook, replied to their promotions. They ignored our emails and Facebook messages, and delete our comments. Super shady organization! Our many attempts to address our bad experience starts below: "We tried emailing your customer service a year ago and were ignored. I posted the below review as a comment on your promoted post, and my comment was deleted. Super sketchy operation y'all are running (scamming). See comment below: 'We did this last year. Great idea, terrible execution. The lines to get in (with tickets already purchased online) were terrible, only a few food trucks (most of which ran out of food), one tiny stage in the middle with no remote screens (could barely hear anything...including when to set off lanterns), fire ants that stung our kids, no traffic coordinators, and the shuttles stopped before the event was over (everyone had to walk the 1+ mile back to the parking area, carrying tired kids, etc.). The worst part is that we emailed all of these concerns to The Lantern Fest customer service, and they ignored us. Seriously, this is a terrible event that we will never go to again.'" read more

This review may be biased since i dont like crowds or traffic, but here it goes. Watching the lanterns were cool and the kids liked the face painting but the event was poorly managed. The lines were long for the shuttle and even to get the firewood. No one was supervising the bounce houses making it rough for my three year old. The line which we were waiting in for food ran out of their only main dish, chicken. They claim they pick up all the lanterns after the show but I have a hard time believing they can find all those plastic bags. Ps the lighting of the lantern is no small feat. read more

Total rip off. For a family this costs $85 and for that you get to wait 30 minutes to get through the line to park, stand in line for 30 minutes at a food truck only to find out the food is gone, terrible music on a weak sound system, and totally inaccessible for handicapped individuals. read more

30 minutes in traffic .1 miles from the parking lot, 20 minutes in line for the tram, TWO HOURS in line for food at the food trucks because they won't allow you to bring your own food, and burned / melted clothing and chairs from fire raining down as lanterns blew toward us and our children. Poor crowd control, poorly managed. Do not recommend. read more

This was the BEST EXPERIENCE of my life and i know that sounds so cliche; but frankly it's the truth. I went to Thailand about 5 years ago for their yearly lantern festival and although that was cool to experience in a foreign country, RiSe was SO MUCH BETTER. If i could compare it to something, I'd say it's just as much of a life altering experience as seeing the moon eclipse 2 years ago when the sky went completely black at like 11 AM; which was supernatural and made the toughest man cry. And that's essentially the same feeling you get once a thousand human sized lanterns (about 4-5 feet tall) go floating up into the night sky at ONCE. The RiSe company does such a good job making everyone feel the perfect vibe for raising your lanterns to the air. When you arrive (which getting parked is kind of a long annoying process i will admit, so leave early), you enter the desert and can find multiple food stands, drinks, and souvenirs like t shirts, necklaces, etc. There's always a live band playing music from the beginning. You go to your designated section and go retrieve your lantern at a white tent. They give you a marker to write on your lantern with. You can spend the next couple hours (or however much you prefer) decorating your lantern. I usually choose to write about my goals, accomplishments, fears, etc. But some people write about love and/loss; which i think is so powerful. You can also grab some food, ice cream, drinks, etc. The ice cream was delicious, the food was decent but if you're not into food truck food, you should eat before.. it's a little overpriced.. but i expected that! It's such a beautiful area seeing the sunset in the desert; it's a perfect time to take pictures together with your friends/family before it gets dark. Around 9 ish, or whenever it's dark, we start to light the torches that are provided for us (there's like a thousand of them, literally), with the matches they give you. Then once it's time to "RiSE", they will cut the music for a second (they put it back on, don't worry) and announce this to everyone. They prefer to release the lanterns all together the first time so we all get the indescribable view of seeing these go up at once. It's essentially the movie Tangled, in real life! Lifting the wax block in your lantern is relatively difficult for first timers. I recommend holding your lantern straight above the flame with 2 or more people. Have PATIENCE. It needs to light for a long time and when it's truly ready to go into the sky, you'll feel it. Don't try and push it or throw it (I've seen people try), you'll find it does NOT work and that lantern will start floating straight into the people around you which sounds funny (it might be a little) but i mean, it's fire!! So that's not very nice! Haha. After that first lantern raise, then it's free game to light as many lanterns as you purchased. I believe they do a second United rise of lanterns together again at some point, but it's never as good as the first time when the sky is CLEAR. Wow! It's magical. I know you're reading this thinking I'm some psycho girl who was paid to write this or something haha (i wish i was paid) but im honestly a relatively normal person that's just trying to convince you just how INCREDIBLE this experience is!!! I've gone every single year (drove 6 hours actually) and i wouldn't miss it! I promise you won't regret it, and if you do, you're the psycho! Jk jk.. but not really. Happy RiSe everyone!! read more

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Buyer beware. These guys will take your money and run. Went to oversold understaffed event and DID NOT get what I paid for. Called to complain...no answer. Emailed...no answer. Email parent business...no answer. BBB complaint.....no answer. These guys are laughing all the way to the bank. read more

They knowingly sold tickets to an illegal event and refused to refund the tickets. Pretty sure that constitutes fraud. The venue claims they informed the organizers that the event was illegal back in July 2017. Lantern Fest continued to sell tickets until at least mid September. Two weeks before the event they cancel due to 'weather' as an excuse to not give refunds. In addition, it appears they are deleting posts of people who are complaining from numerous cities on Facebook. read more

Very Expensive for what it was. Our event was postponed last minute, and that is to be expected given the nature of the event. After re-booking my hotel and other events for the trip to accommodate the event, we finally got to go a couple weeks later. Event was extremely unorganized, we went to park and they told us to look for the attendant in the lot....there was nobody out there, cars parking all over the place, pretty much chaos. When you go to leave it is supposed to be by color code to help with flow, this was not adhered to and once again, chaos. Have to agree with the other reviewer from 8/15, the event was very overcrowded given the number of fire pits, way too many tickets were sold. We got the same broken graham cracker and two marshmallow pack as the other reviewer. They ran out of firewood and had to bring more, causing a delay. Entertainment was one band for one hour, this also started late, so the lantern launch was delayed. The wind finally calmed to get a launch off, but they played music instead, and once we did launch the wind had picked back up. Many lanterns did not even get airborne due to the conditions. Out of the 12 people around our pit only 3 lanterns got off, the others were torn in the wind, wouldn't light, our torches kept blowing out. People's partially lit lanterns were blowing into the children and other groups almost causing a blanket and chair fire near us. We spent a lot of money on this event, and were greatly disappointed. When I asked my children if they would want to try it again under better conditions, they all three said definitely not. Buyer beware. read more

Displeased with the whole thing. You pay $15 for kids' tickets. They don't get s'mores or a lantern. I thought this was a family event. Why would you not give kids a treat? And why are you charging for kids if they don't even get anything? The treats in the adult bags were cheap. TWO marshmallows, 4 small broken graham crackers, O'Henry bar as the chocolate?? Seriously? The fire pits were overly crowded, 10 people per small fire pit. The event itself was insanity. Parking was horrendous, slow moving, not well orchestrated. The lantern festival was dangerous. The strong wind was blowing failing lanterns into the crowd...fire dodge ball. Fiery lanterns were landing on people's blankets and flying into people's heads. Kids were crying because they were scared. Adults were screaming at each other to watch out for the lanterns heading toward them. The idea of it is really fun, but the execution of the event was poorly done. They are obviously in it to make money and don't have much concern for the customer's experience. read more

The worst, do not waste your money and time!!! An excuse to sell overpriced tickets, corral you in chain link fence on concrete for hours so youre forced to buy their crap overpriced food. Lousy music. Horrendous parking and traffic all the way home. 25 person wait at the portapotty. 10 minutes of lanterns cannot make up for how awful this experience was. Ruined my week, a total ripoff!! Shady company. Buy lanterns on Amazon and have your own lantern festival. Wish I would have. You can buy a lot of lanterns for $86 and have a much better time. read more

NO RESPONSE!!! In October I bought tix to the lantern fest in Boise, Idaho. A week before the event they cancelled and said I would be refunded in 14 calendar days. Ok, that sounded reasonable. However, 14 calendar days passed and nothing. I tried to email them twice, but NO RESPONSE. This is the worst company to deal with. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY. If you want to do a lantern festival, it is worth it to sign up with a reliable company like the RISE festival that happens near Las Vegas in October every year. . STILL NO RESPONSE, tried two more times. They cancelled because they couldn't get a venue, told me they would refund my money. No money no response, I'm out $120. read more

Terribly organized. Way too expensive for crappy "treats" and overall sad experience No refunds offered for postponement -created a huge headache for 1/2 our group. Lanterns didn't work. Food trucks had horrible long lines and ran out of food. Not safe. Not fun. We were really looking forward to this and saved up to attend. Such a waste of hard earned money. read more

Do not buy tickets from this company it is a scam. Bought tickets for Indianapolis show was canceled never received a refund over $300 no contact with company nothing will not respond to email does not work DO NOT BUY SCAM!!!!!!!!!!! read more

BUYER BEWARE! We travelled from southern California to Boise, Id to attend a LanternFest event. It was supposed to have taken place on Saturday, April 30th but was cancelled due to wind, which I understand, however, there are no refunds. We planned our trip specifically to attend a lantern festival - air fare, rental car and hotel - for our 35th wedding anniversary. The company running the event takes no risk when something is cancelled, the ticket holder is left with the expense ($35/ticket + the convenience fee) whether they produce or not. You are told that you can transfer your tickets to another date, but I am not going to travel to yet another destination and have this happen again. You also can not speak to a person - all by email. As far as I know they plan these things and cancel them regularly retaining all the ticket sales. read more

I tried to reach out to the customer service, as well as posting this review on Facebook, but my review was deleted and ignored. We went to the lantern fest a year ago now, and we were so excited to take our kiddos for a once in a lifetime experience. However, when we got there we were extremely disappointed. We did a lot of research that stated to get there early in order to find a good spot. It also stated that food would be there, and no coolers were allowed. We arrived early to the event, and found a spot close the the stage around a fire pit. Going through the doors I was watching many coolers come in. I was a little bothered that the rules they had posted online weren't being enforced. We ended up standing in line for over an hour and a half to be able to order 1 cheese burger for four children to share due to all of the food trucks running out of food. There was clearly not enough food for the amount of people attending the event. After waiting 2 hours in another line we decided to give up and just have the kids at least share what we could get. Once it was finally time to light the lanterns (with many threats stating they would close down the event because people were lighting their lanterns early, probably because they wanted to leave in order to get food) we started light the lanterns and people were ambushing our fire to get there lanterns lit. I was fine for sharing but my four kids were getting pushed around rather than people kindly waiting. People weren't instructed on how to release their lanterns so there were many lanterns flying close to your heads and hitting you in the back of the head as well. Once we finally got out of the fireball nightmare and back to our car we waited for over 2 hours to leave due to poor traffic management. This event was a rip off, and purely devastating for our family. I will never ever recommend this to anyone that I know, and I have still to this day warned everyone I possibly can to stay away from an event that is poorly managed. read more

We had great expectations about the lantern fest on 10/13 but it was such a huge disappointment! I can't agree more with some of the reviewers here. We were assigned parking lot C and there was absolutely no info beyond that on how to actually get to the venue. Extremely poor management. We had to walk forever in the cold to reach the launch spot which was overcrowded. Customer support there didn't know a thing on some of our queries. I don't know why this day was chosen because it was really windy, not ideal for sky lanterns! None of our (3 lanterns) took off. The tiki torches kept going off every time! it was frustrating! Some random lanterns which were lit were landing onto spectators and rolling in the wind. It was a bit nerve racking as I was scared for my son and people around us. The only saving grace was the cool experience of watching hundreds of them going away into the night sky. Too bad we could not fully enjoy that either because we were busy scrambling to get ours to go and the wind kept killing them!! :( read more

Horrible management!! We bought tickets for the event in Utah and it took us 3 hours to go 2 miles. No traffic control helping move cars along, no signs as to where to go. We had to walk a mile to the entrance and then that same mile back to the attraction. We walked pass a huge gate and they weren't letting anyone in. Nope - had to walk another 40 minutes down and back again. They just don't seem to care. But once the lights went off it was pretty spectacular. If you go go like 6 hours before it sunset. read more

By far, the WORST experience I've ever had the displeasure of paying for! $250 basically wasted on an event that had NO organization, no direction, and no care or concern by the company! All they wanted was a mass amount of $$. And with people paying over $200 per family, with over 15,000 people, they got that. But us, as customers, basically got screwed. Parking was over 1 mile away, (so the walk with my 2 kids took over and hour to get into the fest) food trucks took over 1.5 hours to serve you, lines for any activities were over 45 mins long. It was horrible. And with NO direction on how to light the lanterns or when, NONE of my lanterns even flew! Absolutely ridiculous! I'm so sad that I was looking forward to this night as a celebration for my kids, and it ended up being a disaster. NEVER AGAIN!! I highly do not suggest anyone spending any money with this company on these events! It's just a waste! And a very upsetting one at that! Not to mention my numerous attempts to get in contact only to see that they have completely ignored me. Just wow!! read more

If you decide to purchase tickets to this even make sure you buy ticket insurance. They just last minute changed the date the event will be held and refuse to refund the money for those who can't attend. I understand they changed the date due to weather. But there is no empathy for the consumer. Without ticket insurance they expect you to sell your own tickets even when they last minute changed the event dates. read more

Do not buy until last minute. Bought tickets for an upcoming event in Colorado Springs, Oct 2016. My Mom flew from CA to join us. It was postponed due to dry weather, until April 2017. We don't have any free weekends in April and my mom's not flying back here. So we filed a claim thru Ticket Guardian as it was included withe our tickets. Our claim was denied! They told us to seek a resolution from the Lantern Fest company. They don't do refunds. These events should be refundable if moved to a new date. Won't be participating or recommending this event to anyone read more

I am another customer who purchased tickets to a Lanternfest event that was rescheduled then cancelled. The said were going to reschedule again, but they have not. They have not responded to emails or Facebook messages. They have an "F" rating from Utah BBB. I'm sure the events that they sometimes actually put on are nice, but their customer service is non-existent. The "ticket insurance" they claim to provide does not cover events they cancel, and in my case, the insurance company does not even have any record of my ticket purchase, even when I provided the exact order number, date and ticket numbers, and I used the link provided in my ticket order confirmation! read more

BUYER BEWARE!!!! I bought tickets to the PHX event for April 8th & planned to travel from SLC. They have now cancelled the event & have not responded to repeated attempts to change tickets to the SLC event or give a refund! Apparently they have done this in several locations & are just taking people's money with out providing a service. read more

Lantern Fest was awesome! I seriously loved it, and my kids loved it too! It was a great fun family event, and will be doing it again.