SAN FRANCISCO – Golden Gate Park has become a spectacle of enchantment, as a stunning new holiday display offers a kaleidoscope of music, colors, and over a million shimmering lights, captivating both the young and the young-at-heart.

Visitors to the city’s Botanical Garden can embark on a mile-long (1.6-kilometer) illuminated journey, where they will encounter towering peonies and fields of lights. The display is a vivid tapestry of creativity, featuring whimsical water lilies and enormous dragonflies, with a Canary Island strawberry tree transformed into a vibrant neon spectacle.

Sarah Marsh of Gardens of Golden Gate Park, which oversees the Botanical Garden, shared her delight in the community’s reaction. “Some of my favorite comments have been from kids: just hearing how it makes them feel, and the happiness and joy,” she noted. “And to be honest,” she added, “it’s the expressions on their faces as they see the lights and experience the trail itself.”

This magical event, known as Lightscape, is not just a local sensation but part of a global phenomenon, with similar immersive holiday trails lighting up sister gardens in Chicago, Brooklyn, and London. The trail has been specially crafted for San Francisco by Sony Music and the UK-based production management company Culture Creative, ensuring a unique and memorable experience tailored to the garden’s environment.

The immersive holiday trails, called Lightscape, are in sister gardens in Chicago, Brooklyn and London, but this is San Francisco’s first. Sony Music and production management company Culture Creative, both based in the United Kingdom, work with each location to create a holiday trail that is specific to the garden.

Sellout crowds have flocked to the San Francisco light show, which ends Jan. 4. It has already attracted 100,000 visitors, said Marsh, with some visitors eager to return during the day to see the plants that dazzled them at night.

“What we hope to do is inspire curiosity,” she said.