What is ZooLights?
The giraffes go to bed and the trees come on. From the night before Thanksgiving to the middle of January, the Phoenix Zoo in Papago Park stays open after dark as ZooLights, a walk-through light show that has grown from “a few hundred thousand twinkles” in 1992 to about five million lights on more than two miles of trail in its 35th season.
The 2026–27 run goes November 25, 2026 through January 15, 2027, nightly from 5:30 to 10:30 p.m. A ticket is $35 ($30 for members, free under 2) and is good for any one night. The set pieces are the Lake Lights Show, a 50-foot LED tree on the water joined this year by six 24-foot trees and a new synchronized show; a 200-foot light tunnel; a three-story Christmas tree; a trail of lit dinosaurs; a Glow Garden with a glowing dance floor and swings; and, new for 2026, Wander the Wonder, which turns the Arizona Trail into a lit installation walk. Santa sits for photos through December 23 for a separate fee.
It is a light show, not a night safari. Most of the animals are off exhibit after dark, and the zoo says so. What it is instead is the Valley’s largest paid holiday draw after the Fairmont’s production up Scottsdale Road, with a crowd the zoo averages at 300,000 a season and its largest multi-day fundraiser of the year. For a family based in Scottsdale it is a fifteen-minute drive down Scottsdale Road and McDowell, which puts it on the short list for December, and the quiet January weeks make it an option for the New Year as well.
How to do it without the Galvin Parkway line
Pick the night, not the show. The lights are identical on December 2 and December 20; the crowd is not. The zoo’s own advice is Monday through Wednesday, the first two weeks of December and any night in January. The Friday and Saturday before Christmas are the nights the parking lots fill and the overflow signs go up.
Arrive late. Everybody shows up at 5:30. Arriving at 7:30 or 8 means a shorter gate line, an easier parking spot and two and a half hours of trail, which is more than most children last. When the main lots are full, message boards point to an overflow lot at Phoenix Municipal Stadium at Van Buren and Priest, a lit 15-minute walk on a paved path. Park there on purpose on a weekend; the walk is faster than the lot queue.
Buy online. Tickets are non-refundable and date-flexible, so buy them the week you decide and skip the window. Six Member Mondays (November 30, December 7 and 14, January 4 and 11) are $10 a head, limit six, which is a reason to join if you have children.
The route. The trail is a loop with spurs. Go counterclockwise, hit the light tunnel and the dinosaurs while the kids are fresh, see the giraffe comedy show or an amphitheater presentation in the middle, and finish at the lake for the tree show, which reads best once eyes have adjusted. S’mores, kettle corn and cocoa are along the way.
Weather. A December night in Papago Park is in the 40s by 8 p.m. Bring the jacket the children insist they do not need.
Pair it. The Desert Botanical Garden shares the parking area and runs Las Noches de las Luminarias on select nights; an afternoon in the garden and ZooLights after dark is a full December day. Our holiday season note ranks the Valley’s lights, and the Railroad Park’s Holiday Lights is the Scottsdale alternative for children under five.
From a few hundred thousand lights to five million
The Phoenix Zoo is a private nonprofit, run by the Arizona Center for Nature Conservation without city operating money, and that fact explains ZooLights. A zoo that lives on gate receipts needs a reason for people to come in the cool months after dark, and in 1992 it found one. The first display was modest; the zoo’s own newsletter remembers “a few hundred thousand twinkles.” By the 25th season in 2016 the count was in the millions, nearly all of it LED, and tickets ran $10.95 to $19.95 depending on the night. The 30th season in 2021 passed three million lights wrapped on close to 300 trees. The 2024–25 season reported four million, 2025–26 added a Glow Garden and 50 lanterns, and 2026–27 claims about five million.
The pandemic left a permanent mark. In 2020 the zoo invented Cruise ZooLights, a drive-through version with a light tunnel and a floating light show, and kept it as a one-night finale; in 2027 it falls on Sunday, January 17, two days after the walk-through closes. A Sensory Friendly night with lower music and no strobing, added in the 2020s, is now an annual fixture.
Ticket prices climbed with the light count: $30 online in 2023, $35 general by 2025, with the $10 Member Mondays added in 2026 as the discount valve. Camel rides, which appeared on ZooLights listings in earlier seasons, are not on the zoo’s 2026 event page, so do not promise them to anyone.
Why Scottsdale treats it as its own
Scottsdale has no zoo. Papago Park sits on the city’s southern line, close enough that our parks guide claims its red buttes, and the Phoenix Zoo and the Desert Botanical Garden together are the city’s de facto natural-history campus. In December that campus runs two of the Valley’s three signature light events within a shared parking area, and the third, Christmas at the Princess, is twelve miles north. A Scottsdale visitor in the holiday weeks can see a resort’s millions of lights, a garden’s eight thousand candles and a zoo’s five million bulbs in three nights without a freeway.
ZooLights is the loudest of the three and the one built most plainly for children. It is also the one that most clearly pays for something: the gate funds a conservation center that bred the Arabian oryx back from the edge of extinction. Thirty-five seasons in, the formula has not changed, only the wattage. Go on a Tuesday, arrive at 7:30, and let the kids run the tunnel twice.