Gallery: ‘Glowing Wild’ brings illuminating display to Redding

A lantern festival that uses Chinese lanterns will be illuminating Turtle Bay for the next two months. 

Glowing Wild Lantern Festival is an annual event held at Turtle Bay near the Sundial Bridge. It’s made possible by coordination from Choose Redding Lodging and installation by Tianyu Arts & Culture, Inc., a lantern festival producer that’s a subsidiary of a company based in China. 

This is the third year that the lantern festival has been held in Redding. Turtle Bay President and CEO Lindsay Myers said this year’s festival has lantern installations that weren’t at the previous two years’ events, including dinosaur lanterns and lanterns inspired by Egyptian animals and structures.

Last year, around 50,000 people attended the festival, Myers said, and she’s hoping for around the same participation this year. 

She explained that one of the biggest challenges of the festival is working with the daytime light this time of year; the event runs from 7-10 p.m. on open nights, but it doesn’t get dark until after 8 in May and June. She said while the lanterns look beautiful during the day, they’re really meant to be seen in darkness. 

It took about a month for the Chinese lantern company to install the 10 acres of lanterns, Myers noted, but it’ll only take about two weeks for them to be taken down.

Regular tickets for the event are priced at $20 for adults and $15 for children, though prices vary depending on Turtle Bay member status and extra add-ons. Myers said Turtle Bay is “really conscious” about ticket pricing, and that the organization made an effort to not raise ticket prices this year. 

She added that there’s a discounted garden admission price during the daytime, where tickets are priced at $10 for adults and $6 for children. 

“This is a fundraiser for Turtle Bay Exploration Park,” she said, “so all of the funds that we raise go back to our education programs, our animal programs and to our museum.”

The event also features food and drinks for sale from Mosaic Restaurant and live entertainment on select nights.

Myers said she not only sees this event as a way for the local community to gather, but also as a way for locals to be exposed to different cultures.

“These are Chinese lanterns, very authentic,” she said. “It’s really amazing just to be able to bring additional culture and art opportunities for the community.”

The festival will be held from 7-10 p.m. on select nights now until June 28. 

See more photos of the lantern festival below.

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