Festival of Lights at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden 3400 Vine St., Avondale Take a walk on the wild side: At the Festival of Lights, guests can enjoy over 4 million LED lights, a light show on Swan Lake, costumed characters, visits with Santa and Mrs. Claus, train rides on the North Polar Express, a blacklight puppet show, an immersive “Under the Sea” area and more. There will also be five Fiona fairies hidden throughout Fairyland for visitors to find, as well as plenty of delicious holiday treats like hot chocolate, roasted nuts and s’mores. Open nightly, except for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, through Jan. 5. Photo: Hailey Bollinger

PNC Festival of Lights Photo: Hailey Bollinger

The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens’ PNC Festival of Lights has won USA Today’s Best Zoo Lights contest for the second year in a row. 

“Each winter, zoos across the U.S. get into the holiday spirit with their own festive seasonal displays. Once the sun sets and the animals go to bed, these 10 U.S. zoos celebrate the season with some of the best lights displays around,” USA Today‘s write-up at 10best.com reads. 

Now in its 37th year of wintery amazement, the Cincinnati Zoo was voted the No. 1 zoo light show in the country by readers of USA Today both in 2018 and 2019. With 3 million LED lights (that’s 284 miles of lights) the zoo transforms into a dazzling display of color and festive cheer this time of year.

The zoo took to their Twitter page to thank everyone who voted for them.

Coming in just after Cincinnati was the Lights Before Christmas at the Toledo Zoo and coming in at No. 10 was L.A. Zoo Lights. See the full top ten list here. 

This article appears in Dec 11-24, 2019.

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