When a truckload of more than 2,000 polyurethane pumpkins arrived at Rock City Gardens in late June, the staff understood the assignment: Get to carving.
“It was a corporation-wide thing,” said Ren Langston, project coordinator for the Innovations Department. “We had people from food, retail — everyone got involved.”
Crews had about three months to work their magic for The Enchanted Pumpkin Patch, the park’s first full-scale Halloween event.
The carving process moved slowly at first, Langston said, with lots of trial and error. But once crews figured out a method that worked, they started knocking pumpkins out quickly.
“Distributing them around the park wasn’t all that bad, but the lighting was difficult,” said Langston. “We had to drill into the back of each pumpkin and wire in individual bulbs. So for all of these thousands of pumpkins, we have thousands of custom light rigs we’ve done.”
Rock City taps into record Halloween spending with new seasonal event
Rock City’s Chief Operating Officer Greg Sheid said the response to the Enchanted Pumpkin Patch has surprised even him.
“We’re seeing days with attendance 25 to 35% higher than before Halloween — compared to the prior year,” he said. “Historically, December has been our biggest month. But I believe what we’re seeing right now is that October and December are going to be very similar in visitation.
“If you look at spending, national retailers show that Halloween is the No. 2 holiday for money spent — on decorations, parties, and things for friends and family. It’s actually catching up and will probably surpass Christmas at some point as the top spending holiday.
Data from the National Retail Federation projects Halloween 2025 to be the biggest in the holiday’s history, with Americans expected to spend a record $13.1 billion, up nearly 13% from last year.
“I know when this all started, I was a naysayer about doing Halloween in theme parks,” Sheid said. “But all our biggest days ended up being in October. And we’re seeing the same thing this first year rolling out Enchanted Pumpkin Patch — we’re seeing numbers we’ve not seen before.”
Sean Phipps, vice president of communications with the Chattanooga Tourism Company, said spring and fall have long been the region’s strongest travel seasons — and are extremely important to supporting the local economy.
According to 2024 data from tourism research firm Longwoods International, 36% of fall travelers return to Chattanooga within a year. “Sixty-seven percent of our overnight visitors in 2024 had been to Chattanooga before,” Phipps said. “That says a lot about how people connect with the city and want to come back.”
For those who have yet to experience Enchanted Pumpkin Patch, they need to act fast. The gardens make a quick turnaround from Oct. 31 to Nov. 1, when the space magically — with the help of hundreds of staffers — transforms into the Enchanted Garden of Lights.
Something guests may not realize, said Langston, is that the 25-foot scarecrow that greets visitors at the entrance secretly doubles as a Christmas tree.
“We just pull off the spooky stuff and pull out the tree.”
Contact Jennifer McNally at jmcnally@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6416.