What is World of Illumination?
World of Illumination is a drive-through holiday light show: a route of about a mile laid out through a stadium parking lot and lined with hundreds of animated LED sculptures and tunnels, synchronized to a soundtrack you pick up on your car’s FM radio, driven at 3 to 5 miles an hour with the windows down. A Phoenix company of the same name builds a different themed version in each of seven cities every winter, and the Valley has two: Reindeer Road in the lots of Tempe Diablo Stadium, the Angels’ spring-training park off I-10, and Candy Rush at Camelback Ranch, the Dodgers’ and White Sox’ park in Glendale.
The 2026–27 Tempe show runs November 13, 2026 through January 3, 2027, and the Glendale show November 12 through January 3, both Tuesday through Sunday with gates at 6 p.m. and last entry at 10. A ticket is for the vehicle, not the people in it, and starts at $39.99, priced by night and sold online only. The drive takes 20 to 30 minutes on a weeknight. The company says each of its displays runs to more than a million lights, each capable of 16 million colors, with six tunnels and several hundred sculptures; Reindeer Road’s set piece is a toy workshop it calls the world’s largest animated toy shop.
It began in the 2017 season as a single show at I-17 and Jomax in north Phoenix, added Tempe Diablo Stadium in 2018, and has grown into a chain that claims more than 6 million customers and the title of the world’s largest drive-through animated light show, which is the company’s own description and not an audited one. For a Scottsdale visitor the Tempe lot is 22 minutes down the 101 and the 60, which makes it the easiest holiday-lights stop in the Valley with small children or anyone who does not want to walk two miles of zoo in the cold. Our holiday season note ranks it alongside the walk-through shows.
How to do it
Buy the right night. Prices are set per date and the gap between a November Tuesday and the Saturday before Christmas is real. Sign up for the email list in October for the presale, which has run at 20 to 30 percent off in recent years, and buy a weeknight in the first three weeks: the lights are the same, the lot is empty, and you can actually drive at 3 miles an hour rather than stop and start.
Getting there. Tempe Diablo Stadium is at 2200 W Alameda Drive, at 48th Street between I-10 and the 60. From Old Town take the 101 south to the 60 west and I-10 east to the 48th Street exit, then north to Alameda Drive, 22 minutes without traffic; follow the event signs into the lot rather than your navigation app. Camelback Ranch, 10710 W Camelback Road, is at the 101 and Camelback in the far West Valley, about 40 minutes.
In the car. Tune the FM radio to the station on the entrance signs and keep the windows down; the sound is better and the kids can lean out. Pets ride along. Convertibles are allowed and are the best seats in the house. Bring your own cocoa and snacks, because there are no concessions; outside food and non-alcoholic drinks are allowed.
How long. Twenty to thirty minutes on a weeknight; on December weekends the queue to enter can match the drive. Arrive at 6 or after 8:30.
The Halloween version. In 2026 the company opened Zombie Zoo at the Tempe lot from September 30 to November 1, its first dedicated Halloween drive-through, with 600-odd sculptures of zombie animals, a jack-o’-lantern tunnel and no actors or scares. The Christmas build replaces it within two weeks.
Pair it. The Phoenix Zoo’s ZooLights and the Desert Botanical Garden’s Las Noches de las Luminarias are ten minutes north in Papago Park on the way home, and the Railroad Park’s Holiday Lights in Scottsdale is the small-child alternative. Diablo is also ten minutes from the Mill Avenue restaurants, so do the lights at 6 and dinner at 7.
A Phoenix family’s light show that went national
The company’s founders, Sigal and Ronny Urman with co-founders Yakir Urman and Simon Kreisberger, told Arizona Jewish Life in 2018 that they had been pitched a conventional holiday light display and decided instead to build something closer to a theme park ride: fully animated LED sculptures, music synchronized to the lights, and a route designed to be seen from a car. The first show opened for the 2017 season at I-17 and Jomax in north Phoenix; the Tempe Diablo Stadium location followed in 2018, and though the company’s own 2019 announcement described the Tempe show as returning for a third year, which would put it in 2017; the exact first Tempe season is hard to pin down. Business listings give 2017 as the founding year.
The pandemic made the format. A light show you watch from inside your own car was one of the few holiday events that could legally open in the winter of 2020, and the company grew on it, donating $25,000 of that season’s proceeds to Make-A-Wish Arizona. In September 2021 it announced its biggest build yet on 1.1 million square feet of the Diablo Stadium lots, and began describing itself as the producer of the world’s largest drive-through animated light show, a phrase it has used ever since without an independent measure behind it. A 2022 expansion added St. Louis and Salt Lake City; by 2024 the company counted more than 6 million customers and shows across several states, and the 2026 roster runs to Tempe, Glendale, Marietta outside Atlanta, Memphis, Lauderhill in Florida, Orland Park outside Chicago and Las Vegas, each with its own theme. The Glendale show ran at Desert Diamond Arena in earlier seasons before moving to the Camelback Ranch lots.
Prices have barely moved: $39.99 a car was the starting price in 2022 and still is in 2026.
Why it belongs on a Scottsdale calendar
Scottsdale has no drive-through lights of its own, and the city’s holiday events, from the resort shows to Scottsdazzle, all require walking. World of Illumination is the one December event in the Valley that works for a two-year-old at bedtime, a grandparent with a walker, a dog, and a 45-degree night, and the Tempe lot is 22 minutes from Old Town on the way to or from Mill Avenue. It is not a destination evening; it is thirty minutes of real spectacle for the price of one adult ZooLights ticket, and the smart Scottsdale December does it on a Tuesday in November, with dinner afterward, and saves the walk-through shows for the weekends.