This just in from Orange County Parks and Recreation: The annual Cypress Grove Festival of Lights, a holiday light show that has taken place at Cypress Grove Park for the past 15 years, has been cancelled. Apparently, the event was a victim of its own popularity. According to the county, the park usually gets around 200 cars per night for the event – people pay $3 to drive through the holiday lights on the park – but this year, more than 1,800 cars showed up for the first two nights and overwhelmed neighborhoods with traffic. "For the care and consideration of neighboring residents, the decision was made to cancel the event," an announcement from the county reads.
The Festival of Lights was supposed to run from Nov. 30 through Dec. 4.
Posts to the
event's Facebook page show people complaining about sitting in traffic for up to an hour and a half to get in, getting stuck in traffic along Orange Avenue because people were in line to get into the park, watching cars stopped on railroad tracks while waiting to get into the display and more.
The county is diverting people to
Moss Park's Light Up the Wild display, which takes place Dec. 13-19, and the
Holiday at Heritage Square at the Orange County History Center, scheduled for Dec. 12 from 2-6 p.m.
