Every December the same question floats around our breakfast table at 300 Clifton: “Where should we go to see the lights?” It is a better question than it sounds, because the Twin Cities now offer four very different ways to do it, and they suit very different evenings. Here is how they compare, from the point of view of a mansion in Loring Park that watches a lot of guests head out into the snow.
The four ways to see Twin Cities holiday lights
Broadly, you can drive through a light show, walk through one, ride a bus past neighborhood displays, or board a heated vintage trolley. Each has a sweet spot.
Drive-through light shows
Sever’s Holiday Lights in Shakopee is the big one: a two-mile course of more than 2.5 million lights synced to holiday music, and you never leave the car. Magic of Lights at Viking Lakes in Eagan has run the same way in recent seasons. The upside is obvious on a subzero night, and it is the easiest option with sleepy toddlers in pajamas. The downside is that somebody has to be the driver, both are a thirty-minute-plus drive from downtown Minneapolis, and you spend a good part of the evening in a queue of taillights.
Walk-through light festivals
GLOW Holiday Festival turns CHS Field in St. Paul into a million-light playground and returns November 19, 2026, and the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum’s Winter Lights in Chaska strings a mile of garden paths with botanical displays. These are immersive and wonderful for photos. They are also outdoors, on your feet, for the better part of an hour and a half, so dress for it. GLOW does not allow you to bring your own alcohol in, and neither is exactly an intimate evening for two.
Bus tours of neighborhood lights
Meet Minneapolis lists several motorcoach and party-bus tours that loop the best residential displays. Most of them have you meet at a downtown bar or a parking lot, drag your cooler across the ice, and check in on the curb before you climb aboard. The lights are lovely; the boarding experience is not.
The heated trolley that boards inside a mansion
This is the one we send our guests to, and not only because it is family. The Holiday Light Ride from Minneapolis Trolley Tours starts inside the Pillsbury Club, the 1912 Charles S. Pillsbury mansion on East 22nd Street. You check in inside a limestone mansion rather than on a sidewalk, browse a holiday market of Minnesota makers, order a cocktail or a bite, and then carry your drinks straight onto a heated vintage trolley wrapped in garland. No cooler, no parking lot, no bar crawl before the ride. Routes change through the season to follow the best displays, so you may see grand old neighborhoods one night and the downtown skyline lights the next, in both Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
There are two versions. Santa’s Nice Ride is the all-ages, one-hour edition with carols, narration, a vote for the best-decorated house, and the holiday market to wander before and after; tickets start at $30. The Naughty Holiday Party Ride is 21-and-over, two hours long, bring-your-own-drinks, and closer to a rolling holiday party than a tour; it starts at $75. If you are torn, our guide to picking Naughty or Nice settles it, and we have answered the most common question about the 21+ ride, whether you can bring your own drinks, in its own post. Planning a night for two? The trolley’s own date-night guide is a good read.
So which one is right for you?
Choose a drive-through if you have very small children and a long tolerance for traffic. Choose a walk-through if you want the spectacle and do not mind the cold. Choose the trolley if you would rather spend the evening warm, with a drink in hand, in good company, and with a mansion to come back to at the end of the loop. For a date, a girls’ night, a visiting family or an office group, that last option wins more often than not.
Make it a holiday weekend in Loring Park
The Pillsbury Club is about a mile from our front gate, which means a lights night can end in a proper bed rather than a long drive home. 300 Clifton is the 1906 Eugene J. Carpenter Mansion, dressed for the season with a tree on the snowy front lawn and the skyline glowing behind it. Come back from the trolley to a soak in the hot tub, a late movie in the movie room, and a night in the Crystal Mansion Room or the Georgian Room. Add a daytime Gilded Age Mansion Tour and you have a full Minneapolis Christmas without moving the car once.
Ready to go? Book your Holiday Light Ride early, because December dates sell out, then reserve your room at 300 Clifton and let the mansion do the rest.
Keep reading: Where should you stay for a Guthrie weekend this fall? Waiting for Godot and Kunene and the King, October 2026