Stanley Park’s Christmas train tickets to go on sale this week

Stanley Park's Bright Nights is marking the return of the Christmas train for another year. (Courtesy: City of Vancouver)

Stanley Park will welcome the return of its annual Bright Nights festive event, complete with its illuminated train ride, for another year.

The beloved yearly tradition sees the Stanley Park forest transform into a winter wonderland, with over 3,000,000 Christmas lights, festive displays, live entertainment, food vendors proffering pretzels and popcorn, and a photo booth helmed by Santa himself.

The event will be going full steam ahead with the festive iteration of its Stanley Park Train, due to operate daily from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. except on Christmas Day.

The Bright Nights event will run from Nov. 29 until Jan. 4, 2025.

Tickets for the train rides are set to go on sale from midday on Nov. 8, with the waiting room to open at 11:30 a.m. To help “facilitate a fair and efficient process” the event will be using an online ticketing system that puts buyers in an online queue, said the park board in a statement.

Those in the waiting room will be randomly assigned a spot in the queue, while anyone who joins after will be placed at the back of the line on a first-come, first-served basis.

Free admission will be offered to guests in wheelchairs and support persons accompanying guests with disabilities, with accessible tickets available to be booked in advance the morning of Nov. 9. The ticket line 1-844-307-7469 will be open from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Due to the high demand and limited seating available, guests are encouraged to lock in their tickets early. Last year, tickets sold out at such a rate - 23,000 tickets were snapped up within an hour and a half - that event organizers were prompted to extend the duration of the event until January. Park goers were invited to purchase a second round of tickets in late November.

It marked the first year the iconic locomotive was welcomed back to Stanley Park after a failed technical inspection forced its hiatus in 2022. The train had been put on another hold in 2021 after a stolen power source forced its closure, and was also closed in 2020, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Organized by the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation in collaboration with the BC Professional Fire Fighters' Burn Fund, the annual event raises funds for burn survivors and their families across the province. Since the event’s inception in 1998, the park board has donated over $2.5 million to the Burn Fund.

With high traffic expected and limited parking available, the park board is encouraging event goers to consider public transport or heading to the event on foot.

Parking near the Stanley Park Railway will be limited due to construction on Metro Vancouver’s Stanley Park Water Supply Tunnel, set to begin in November, while a two-hour pay parking limit will be in effect at the main railway lot, said the park board. Free event parking will be available at the Stanley Park information booth, Vancouver Aquarium, and Lumberman’s Arch.