The Grotto's "Festival of Lights" Review

100% pure Portlandia, but the upside down version. Recommend taking a flask with you if you must go.

Walk through thousands of lights to celebrate Christmas. Music of many styles both inside and outside. It's a beautiful place with many helpful volunteers. It's not free, but for us it was worth it.

My first time going to this. Easy to find and get to. Parking is limited, so pray for a spot to open up on your first time around. Once inside the lights are well done and there's a calming atmosphere. My favorite part was the brief earful of the wonderful choir. Maybe next time we can beat the crowd :)

What a great way to stop and put the busy world around you on pause. Parking is a bit of a hassle but the Portland police are there to help you cross the street. Beautiful, peaceful, calming, and memorable. The music and lights in this setting are absolutely healing.

So beautiful and peaceful. Th lights and story walk are always nicely done. The choirs in the chapel are l, without fail, inspiring. Cool gift shop. Cute puppet shows. My favorite part is the man who plays an ancient instrument I can t remember the name of. He s always right outside the gift shop by some tables. My young daughter can t help but dance to him and his music. Lol

Good because of the local school choir. The light it self okay. More value in the ambiance and the solitude to pray and reflect. Ad Dei gloriam

It was worth going too. If you are into singing than it s really worth it. I have it 4 stars because I was expecting more things beside the choirs and the line for food was super long. The petting zoo was cool

Less than impressed with the amount of display, especially for the price. What little that was there was pretty but not worth the cost.

I love this place around Christmas time! A lot of beautiful light displays and the Clackamas choirs were awesome!

Lame. Don t waste your time or money. $11 for 10min if walking through some haphazardly hung lights. Watching kids sing in the choir is nice but the lighting display leaves much to be desired. The parking is terrible and the parking attendants are inefficient at best. They seem to have control issues and incredibly rude. We won t be wasting our time or money again.

My first time coming to the Grotto lights and it wasn't as big as I expected. The area was smaller than I thought but they did have a petting zoo! The high school choirs that performed that night was the highlight of the trip. Overall, great place to visit if you are in the area.

Too expensive to freeze your butt off seeing 20min worth of lights

Parking was terrible, and price was far to high for 5 minutes of Christmas light viewing.

We have gone to this Christmas event the past 2 years and loved it so much we decided to bring my mother in law and her husband with us this year. The lights and music were beautiful as always, however, my mother in law bought one of the hotdogs from the hotdog booth, it was $9 for one hot dog and she waited A long time for her order to be ready, when she finally received the hot dog she cut it in half and gave some to my 2 year old son, when she started eating it she realized the hot dog was cold and not fully cooked but my son had already eaten his half of the hot dog. That night my son got very sick, throwing up throughout the night, and my mother in law got very sick the next day. It s bad enough for a church event to be selling over priced hotdogs but to be selling uncooked hotdogs too, that is so dangerous and completely unacceptable!! These weren t average ballgame hotdogs either, they were raw sausage hotdogs, people could die from eating these kind of raw hot dogs, this is a serious safety issue and we were all very disappointed!!

A good place to visit at night and enjoy its lights

Great family friendly event on a beautiful property :)

Our kids had the time of their lives, it was a great experience

The Festival of Lights at the Portland Grotto is really fun - just the right kind of thing to kick off the holiday season with. One of the coolest things about the event is that it is put on with the help of about 1000 volunteers and is a community effort to make happen.

Worth the money at Christmas time, surprised my girlfriend and we had a blast listening to the choirs in the church.

My family and I visited the Grotto s Christmas Festival of Lights this year since we love to see wonderful holiday displays.

And this is by far some of the most phenomenal and beautiful arrangements to be seen!

The multitude of number and colors are just outstanding and overwhelming as at times you are just fully immersed in the beauty.

We had a chance to rest a bit and listen to the choir singing carols in the Chapel of Mary: their voices sounded like angels singing praise.

By day, the Grotto is must see for anyone who is interested in reflection/self-reflection, meditation, contemplation or has a sense of/for the spiritual.

But for the holiday season, by night, this is a must see for the entire family.
There is a great petting zoo and food and other concessions as well. But all very tastefully done so as not to diminish the aura of the Grotto.

After all, Light, Love, and Peace are what this season is about.

Beautiful light display! Beautiful grounds! Being extra cash for delicious waffle sandwiches!!

Great atmosphere and calming lights. When leaving we were greeted with some volunteers singing a christmas song which was entertaining and precious to see

More amazing lighting display every year. Love to sing in that chapel. One of the best performance spaces in Portland.

First time going as a family and we all loved it. quite a few things to do listening to the choir singing, seeing a puppet show, petting the animals. Even enjoyed a hot cocoa & cider. Yes it was a little crowded and smaller compared to other light festivals but the lights mixed with the calming atmosphere of the church made our walk enjoyable yet peaceful. All staff was super welcoming too!

A nice Christmas tradition, I love coming here and seeing the lights, and walking around in the company of families, and hearing Christmas carols sung in the cathedral. At $11, I personally think it s a bit pricey, especially for those with a large family. This year, someone handed me, what looked 3-D glasses. I put them on, and all of the lights had tiny angels floating around them. This made me feel like I had ingested psychedelics, which was quite cool, but I m sure was not the point of the glasses. Recommended

All these people rating 1-3 stars and complaining about the price, lack of lights, bad parking, etc. need to recognize that The Grotto is a Catholic Church IN THE WOODS. It is PRIVATE PROPERTY not a public park paid for by The City of Portland. That means that $11 you're spending per person is a donation to a local, religious organization. Those lights aren't hung by paid employees but by volunteers from the community involved with the Church and The Grotto itself (which has its own volunteer and Church-employed people).

The Grotto is a beautiful place to behold.
If you go in with a humble heart, you will come out of it as such. If you go in whining and complaining about too many people, costs to much, parking sucked why wasn't it better, or any number of other lame excuses for being an entitled SoCal/New Yorker you're gonna hate the experience; you should just go to Zoo Lights because staring at animals in captivity is a much more enriching use of your time and money.

Get a fuxking clue, use your brain for some critical-thinking for once before you libelously shame a christmas light display that you had no hand in producing.

Quite expensive for what it offers - $11 per adult. It was crowded and all the events were too crowded to speculate. The lighting was nothing special and looked like they just wrapped around the tree with no artistic value. It has a festival zoo which had one camel and 3 lamas... lighted trail ended even before we knew it.

If you go for the lights - skip it at 11 dollars for anyone over 13 (since when are these adults) the lights are sorely disappointing compared to the zoo lights. If the choir is your thing get seats downstairs upfront as you can barely hear the choir on the second level. With the 9 of us (5 teenagers) at a 100 bucks I felt it was quite a rip off. If you want to see the lights 99% of them are visible from the road a drive by will do just fine.

Beautiful... Lots of love and hugs and Serenity! In memory of Catherine Merrill Merritt.

make sure to check your receipt for the entry fees. they try to scam you by overcharging, something i thought you would only have to worry about in rome, italy. they charged me $69 for two adults and one child just this past saturday (11/30/19, should only be $31.50). good thing i checked before stepping away.

So many lights, caroling, choirs, and a petting zoo.

Went their during the Christmas lights time. The decorations were less but attractive , it is too pricey compared to Zoo lights.

Absolutely a beautiful and stunning place. Can't wait to go again next year

This place is a money grab. We couldn't have been more underwhelmed and disappointed.

The festival of lights was a bit boring and felt lazily put together. Not worth my time or money.

Thank you for keeping Christ in Christmas. Well worth the price.

Grotto s Christmas Festival of LightsIt is a must see in Portland for the holidays. Everyone knows and talks about it. So we decided to visit this year. It was beautifully decorated, nice choir singing, popcorn and hot chocolate was available even a small petting zoo. It certainly creates a Holiday atmosphere. So once inside all was perfect and nice. But finding a parking was challenging. We waited on a long line of cars trying to find parkings, most parking lots were full even though we were there early. It took us about half hour of stressful scouting to find a parking which was located far from the event entrance. I would of rated the event 5 stars but it was stressful to find a parking.

Awesome place. Everything is perfect , esp the light settings and choir scheduled. Appreciate people of every age participating in the event.

Not just for Christmas but anytime you could use a peaceful stroll through lovely gardens.

Wonderful music and beautiful lightling evwrywhere you look

Great light display. There's always a group or two singing or playing music outside that you can sit and listen to. There's a chapel that has nightly performances as well. The major downsides to this place are the crowds (parking can be a beast during busy times) and the cost. $48 for our family of 6. Seems a bit overpriced.