Every year we look forward to the Ahwatukee Festival of Lights.  We usually go out just after lunch to walk through the row of craft vendor booths while the kids enjoy the carnival games or hang out with their friends.  As it grows later, wife and I head to the beer garden to mingle with friends and sneak drinks out of our flasks we smuggled in.  Around 6pm the parade of Harleys arrive (with Santa), and then we stay in the beer garden until forced to leave around 7pm.  We drag our kids home at that point, and then wife and I head out with friends for a night cap. But this year… the entire day was disappointing.

The weeks leading up to the Festival of Lights (FOL) were filled with newspaper articles about how they almost didn’t have enough funds raised to make it happen… and it showed.  We arrived to find that the Xmas tree silent auction was eliminated, and the crowd was significantly smaller (guessing ~20% less).  The beer garden that is usually standing room only had plenty of seats and small drink lines, and the friends that host a small gathering in their RV in the parking lot appeared to have left their RV sit idle.

[1] To be fair, the weather wasn’t great, and it did end up raining around 4pm. However, the crowd was weak, and the disappointment had already set in long before the rains came.  The light rain drove all by the hardy beer garden attendees away.  A few brave ones toughed it out (some under the tables) to stay dry.

Eventually we left because our youngest child was not feeling well.  We grabbed him some cough medicine at the Walgreen’s and then had a quick bite to eat at Loco Patron before going home for the night.  We managed to have a good time because we make our own fun; however, we may have to re-evaluate attendee the FOL in the future.