Each year the Frog Pond in Boston Common has a Halloween festival a few weeks before Halloween where you can bring a small carved pumpkin and they will put a light in it and float it on the frog pond.  Hundreds of people show up to this event and it’s pretty magical to see all the pumpkins glowing on the pond, and even more fun when you can point out yours adding to the light.

We had the opportunity to go last year and we loved it.  It was super easy to get to, we could wonder around wherever our son wanted to go and we had a blast kicking off the Halloween season with such a fun festival.

Things to Note:

1) Bring a Carved Pumpkin
Your pumpkin should be smallish, they recommend 8″ pumpkins and it’s a lot more fun to have a carved pumpkin because you can see it when it’s out on the water (ours was a bit last minute and it was painted).  They will provide the light for you and it’s really fun to see all the pumpkins together lighting up the water. (When the festival is over all the pumpkins are donated to a compost company.)

2) Snacks
There are bunch of booths set up circling the pond giving out free stuff or having activities for children.  We walked away with some granola bar samples, cheese, fruit rolls, flavored water and more.

3) Crafts & Fun
There are also a bunch of crafts set up around the Frog Pond.  We made paper bag luminaries (again the lights were provided for us) and got to see our bag set up around the Frog Pond.   There were also magic tricks and scary stories being told at different places.

4) Parade
Children are encouraged to dress up and midway through the night they will be instructed to line up, music will start playing and they can march around the Frog Pond.  (Also, this is about the time that free glow sticks were handed out to all the children).

5) Crowds and Strollers
There were tons of people here and I was so glad that we didn’t bring our stroller.  There were a few people that had them and watching them trying to make their way through the thick masses of people looked super stressful.  If you have children that can walk this is one of the instances where I would suggest leaving the stroller behind, it’s a super short walk from the “T” and the stroller is likely going to cause more stress than it’s going to absolve.

6) Getting There &/or Parking
I would highly suggest taking the “T” to get here as the “Park Street” stop from both the red and green lines drop off literally at the park, giving you a thirty second walk to the pond.  If you must drive there is a parking garage with a limited amount of parking at Boston Common as well.

Summary & Rating ★★★☆☆

Three stars.  We had a lot of fun going and being able to add our pumpkin to the other pumpkins floating on the water, however the crows were crazy!  Trying to get around the pond to see the different vendors took some fancy footwork and if you want to float your pumpkin your best bet is to get there when it starts because toward the middle/end of the event the line to hand off pumpkins was quite long.  We enjoyed going, and I’m glad we tried it at least once but there are so many fun things going on around the city at this time of year that I think we’ll check out some new, less overwhelming, options next time around.

Frog Pond Pumpkin Float
Frog Pond
Boston, MA 02108

Phone: 617.635.2120
Website: http://bostonfrogpond.com/2015/03/pumpkin-festival/