Halloween Events in Los Angeles for Kids
For toddlers and preschoolers, the safest Los Angeles Halloween bets are daytime and gentle: Boo at the L.A. Zoo folds trick-or-treating into a normal $27 zoo day on two late-October weekends, and Halloween at Kidspace Children's Museum in Pasadena runs costume parades and a spooky-house trike ride from September 18 to October 31 for $17. For an evening walk, Carved at Descanso Gardens is the jack-o'-lantern trail most LA families name first, $29 and open nightly from October 2 to November 1, 2026.
None of the twelve is built to frighten: eight are rated not scary and three mildly spooky. So the real choice is the clock. Five run in the daytime and have to fit around naps, six run in the evening, including all three pumpkin trails and both aquarium nights, and Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch in Culver City does both.
Our picks
- A preschooler who scares easily: Halloween at Kidspace Children's Museum. Rated not scary, held in the daytime, and included with normal $17 admission, with costume parades three times a day.
- Whichever October evening works: Carved at Descanso Gardens. Open nightly from October 2 to November 1, 2026 for $29, with a mile of carved and lit pumpkins and no scares.
At a glance
| Option | Ticket Price | Event Type | Scare Level | Time of Day | 2026 Dates | Address |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $29source | Jack-o'-lantern trailsource | Not scarysource | Eveningsource | Nightly, October 2 – November 1, 2026source | 1418 Descanso Drive, La Cañada Flintridge, CA 91011source | |
| $34.5source | Jack-o'-lantern trailsource | Not scarysource | Eveningsource | Select nights, September 25 – November 1, 2026source | 26800 Mulholland Hwy, Calabasas, CA 91302source | |
| Jack-o'-lantern trailsource | Not scarysource | Eveningsource | Select nights, September 18 – November 1, 2026source | 26300 Crenshaw Blvd, Palos Verdes Peninsula, CA 90274source | ||
| $27source | Zoo or aquarium eventsource | Not scarysource | Daytimesource | Saturdays & Sundays, October 24–25 and October 31 – November 1, 2026source | 5333 Zoo Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90027source | |
| $30.95source | Zoo or aquarium eventsource | Mildly spookysource | Eveningsource | Friday, October 23, 2026source | 100 Aquarium Way, Long Beach, CA 90802source | |
| Zoo or aquarium eventsource | Mildly spookysource | Eveningsource | Saturday, October 17, 2026source | 3720 Stephen M White Dr, San Pedro, CA 90731source | ||
| $49source | Theme park eventsource | Not scarysource | Daytimesource | Select days, September 18 – November 1, 2026source | 26101 Magic Mountain Pkwy, Valencia, CA 91355source | |
| $10source | Pumpkin patchsource | Mildly spookysource | Daytime and eveningsource | October 2 – 31, 2026source | 10100 Jefferson Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232source | |
| Pumpkin patchsource | Not scarysource | Daytimesource | Saturdays & Sundays, October 10 – 31, 2026source | 4102 S. University Drive, Pomona, CA 91768source | ||
| $17source | Museum eventsource | Not scarysource | Daytimesource | September 18 – October 31, 2026source | 480 N. Arroyo Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91103source | |
| $20source | Museum eventsource | Daytimesource | September 26 – November 1, 2026source | 11800 Foothill Blvd, Sylmar, CA 91342source | ||
| Community festivalsource | Not scarysource | Eveningsource | Saturday, October 31, 2026source | 919 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CAsource |
Nap-time outings versus after-dark ones
The daytime five differ mostly in how long they run. Kidspace (September 18 to October 31) and Enchanted Halloween at Discovery Cube Los Angeles (September 26 to November 1) each run five to six weeks, while Boo at the L.A. Zoo is just two weekends, October 24-25 and October 31 to November 1, and Cal Poly Pomona PumpkinFest runs Saturdays and Sundays from October 10 to 31. Tricks and Treats at Six Flags Magic Mountain has a hard stop built in: stay too late and the park switches over to Fright Fest's mazes and roaming monsters.
The two aquarium nights are single evenings that need to go on the calendar: Sea Scare at Cabrillo Marine Aquarium on Saturday, October 17, and Scarium Family Night at the Aquarium of the Pacific on Friday, October 23. The DTLA Halloween Festival for Kids falls on Halloween itself, early in the evening, and gives kids in downtown apartment towers real doors to knock on in Grand Hope Park.
How spooky is it for a young child
The three mildly spooky events are spooky in different ways. Sea Scare builds a mystery through a Skull Alley, a mad scientist's lab and a small haunted house, and of the two aquarium nights it is the one more likely to be too much for a sensitive preschooler. Scarium keeps to a vampire magician, a DJ and a costume contest, and it bans full-face masks and toy weapons, which is worth knowing before the costume is picked. Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch is the third.
Discovery Cube's cell is blank because the pages we could reach for its 2026 daytime format say nothing about tone. No event here is rated genuinely spooky, because the haunts, among them Halloween Horror Nights, Fright Fest and Delusion, were left out as a different kind of night.
Pumpkin trails and pumpkin patches
Each of the three jack-o'-lantern trails is about a mile on foot. Carved at Descanso Gardens is the one open every night, and 2026 is its first year open on Halloween night for trick-or-treating. Night of the Jack at King Gillette Ranch in Calabasas ($34.50) adds Jack's Carnival, roughly a dozen kid-sized rides and midway games, and needs a timed ticket for every guest. Magic of the Jack O'Lanterns on the Palos Verdes Peninsula opens first, on September 18, with bounce pads and slides in a fun zone and s'mores stations along the route.
The two patches price in opposite ways. Mr. Bones charges $10 to get in, but its rides, games, slides and face painting run on separate activity tickets, so $10 is a floor rather than a total. Cal Poly Pomona PumpkinFest bundles corn and sunflower mazes, a hay wagon ride, a cow train and a petting farm into one admission, charges for pumpkins separately, and reliably sells out.
The options in detail
Carved at Descanso Gardens
Descanso Gardens lights a mile of its woodland loop with hand-carved and illuminated pumpkins every October, and it is the jack-o'-lantern walk most Los Angeles families name first. The pull is the artistry rather than the fright: giant carved gourds, an illuminated railroad display, wood spirits tucked into the oaks, and new commissioned sculptures each season. Because it runs nightly for a full month it is the easiest of the big trails to slot into a schedule, and 2026 is the first year the gardens open on Halloween night itself for trick-or-treating. Plan on a mile of walking on garden paths, and book a dated ticket early: weekend slots sell out.
Night of the Jack
Night of the Jack spreads a one-mile trail of carved and projected pumpkins across King Gillette Ranch, a Santa Monica Mountains parkland that gives the show a wide-open setting the garden trails cannot match. It leans theatrical: projection mapping on the ranch buildings, larger-than-life lantern sculptures, food trucks, and a bar for the adults. For 2026 the organizers added Jack's Carnival, roughly a dozen kid-sized rides and midway games, which makes it more of an evening out than a walk-through. It opens earliest in the season of any big LA pumpkin trail, and timed tickets are required for every guest.
Magic of the Jack O'Lanterns
This travelling pumpkin show settled at South Coast Botanic Garden on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, which makes it the South Bay's answer to the jack-o'-lantern trails up in the foothills. More than ten thousand carved pumpkins line a mile of garden path, built into set pieces like pirate ships, dinosaurs and dragons, with a pumpkin light show set to music repeating through the night. Two things separate it from the other trails for families with young kids: bounce pads and slides in a dedicated fun zone, and s'mores stations along the way. It opens the earliest of the three big LA pumpkin walks, in mid-September.
Boo at the L.A. Zoo
The zoo's Halloween weekends are the default answer for LA parents with kids too young for anything after dark. Nothing extra is charged at the gate: trick-or-treat stations, keeper talks, themed photo ops and live performances are all folded into a normal day at the zoo, and the animals get pumpkins of their own to tear apart, which is usually the part kids talk about afterwards. It is a daytime event over two late-October weekends, so it competes with nap schedules rather than bedtimes. Costumes are expected, and the zoo is large enough that crowds spread out.
Scarium Family Night at the Aquarium of the Pacific
The Long Beach aquarium hands over one Friday night in October to costumed families, and the after-hours framing is the appeal: the galleries stay open late, lit for Halloween, with a self-guided scavenger hunt threaded through them. Trick-or-treating comes with a provided goodie bag, and the entertainment runs to a vampire magician, a DJ, photo booths and a costume contest rather than anything designed to frighten. It is a single evening, so it needs to go on the calendar rather than be treated as a drop-in. Full-face masks and toy weapons are not allowed, which is worth knowing before a costume is chosen.
Sea Scare at Cabrillo Marine Aquarium
San Pedro's city-run aquarium builds a new story around its Halloween night each year, and 2026's is Monsters of Myth. Kids work a mystery by hunting clues through the galleries, which include a Skull Alley, a mad scientist's lab and a small haunted house, then collect candy on a trick-or-treat trail and a trunk-or-treat. Carnival games, craft tables and a glow zone fill out the evening. It is the most narrative of the LA aquarium Halloween nights and the one most likely to tip into genuinely spooky for a sensitive preschooler, though it is still built for families. Aquarium members get free early entry an hour ahead.
Tricks and Treats at Six Flags Magic Mountain
Magic Mountain runs two Halloween events on the same calendar, and this is the one for children: a daytime fall festival that packs up before Fright Fest's mazes and roaming monsters take the park after dark. Kids twelve and under trick-or-treat along a trail through Looney Tunes Land, and 2026 adds a pumpkin-decorating stand, a Looney Tunes costume dance party and a low-key trail built for the smallest visitors. The family rides stay open throughout, so it doubles as an ordinary theme-park day. The hard constraint is timing: arrive late and you are in the park as it flips over to the scary version.
Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch
A Westside institution since 1987, Mr. Bones is an urban pumpkin patch built for families who are not going to drive to a farm. It has moved around Los Angeles over the decades and now sits in Culver City, drawing from Santa Monica to Manhattan Beach. Admission buys entry to the patch and its photo sets; the rides, games, slides and face painting run on separately purchased activity tickets, which is the thing most first-timers get wrong when budgeting. Weekday admission is cheap and the hours run late, so an after-school visit is realistic. Weekend mornings and the run-up to Halloween are when it gets crowded.
Cal Poly Pomona PumpkinFest at Kellogg Ranch
The university's teaching farm opens to the public on October weekends, and one admission covers nearly everything: corn and sunflower mazes, a hay wagon ride, a cow train, a petting farm and agriculture demonstrations run by students. That bundling is what sets it apart from commercial patches, where each ride is a separate ticket. Each weekend carries its own theme, so a second visit is not a repeat. Pumpkins are bought separately from the patch, and the site is a working farm, which means dust, sun and a long walk. It reliably sells out, so tickets are worth buying before you drive out to Pomona.
Halloween at Kidspace Children's Museum
Kidspace runs the gentlest Halloween on this list, and the one aimed squarely at preschoolers. The season stretches across six weeks rather than a weekend, and the Halloween programming is layered onto a museum kids already know: costume parades three times a day, a trike ride through a spooky house, a potion-mixing witch's kitchen and Halloween bowling. Everything is included with normal admission, so there is no separate event ticket to plan around. The three-and-a-half-acre campus is mostly outdoors, which helps with young children who need to move. It is Pasadena, so parking near the Rose Bowl can be affected by other events.
Enchanted Halloween at Discovery Cube Los Angeles
The Sylmar science museum dresses its exhibits for Halloween across a long autumn run and folds the whole thing into general admission, which makes it one of the cheaper multi-week options in the north Valley. Past years have mixed spooky-science demonstrations, trick-or-treat stations, hay bale mazes, carnival games and costume contests with the museum's permanent hands-on galleries, so a visit works even if the Halloween layer runs thin for older kids. For 2026 it runs during regular daytime hours rather than as the evening event it has been in some past seasons. It is the only entry here in the far north San Fernando Valley.
DTLA Halloween Festival for Kids
Downtown's answer to a residential street on Halloween night: the Downtown LA Alliance builds a trick-or-treat trail of real doors to knock on inside Grand Hope Park, so kids who live in apartment towers get the door-to-door ritual anyway. Around it are character meet-and-greets, a DJ dance party, craft tables and puppet and magic shows on a half-hour rotation. The organizers pitch it at ages two to eight, and it lands on Halloween itself in the early evening, which makes it a substitute for trick-or-treating rather than an addition to it. Last entry is well before the close, and it has run for well over a decade.
How we researched this
Every event here is in Los Angeles County, spread on purpose from Calabasas and Sylmar to San Pedro and Pomona so the map is useful, and every 2026 date was read on the organizer's own page in early September 2026. Orange and Ventura county favorites, from Oogie Boogie Bash and Knott's Spooky Farm to Underwood Family Farms, were left out because the page is about Los Angeles. Boney Island has closed permanently, as the LA Times reported in August 2026, and the Ghost Train at Los Angeles Live Steamers ended after 2015, though both still turn up in older roundups. One-afternoon neighborhood carnivals, stage shows such as Bob Baker's Hallowe'en Spooktacular, and the Natural History Museum's Spider Pavilion, a live-animal exhibit that runs to December, are not here either.
Ticket Price is the regular adult price before fees. Four are blank because no 2026 price could be pinned down: DTLA's tickets were due to go on sale in September 2026, Sea Scare's price was not on the aquarium's pages, Cal Poly's sits behind a booking calendar, and sources gave different figures for Magic of the Jack O'Lanterns. There is no age column because almost no organizer publishes age guidance; only DTLA (ages two to eight) and the Six Flags trick-or-treat trail state an age range. The L.A. Zoo's $27 could rise by $2 under a proposal before the City Council in August 2026, so check the price when you book.