2018 Golden Teddy Awards — Out + About

Winner: Woodland Park Zoo’s WildLights

An avalanche of votes made WildLights at Woodland Park Zoo the winner! This annual holiday lights show is certain to create lifelong holiday memories. Everyone loves the wild animals and exotic destination scenes, which are illuminated by more than 600,000 LED lights. Guests warm up around fire pits, have indoor snowball fights at Snowmazium, take night rides on the carousel and visit select indoor exhibits that are home to nocturnal animals like sloths and fruit bats.

Finalists

The affordable and stunning Garden d’Lights at the Bellevue Botanical Garden features more than a half million sparkling lights, all formed into the whimsical shapes of plants, flowers, birds, animals and cascading waterfalls, and set amid this garden’s beautiful backdrop.

For more than 25 years, guests have loved the eye candy at Sheraton Seattle’s Gingerbread Village, an architect- and chef-designed masterpiece of sweetness. In recent years, the village has drawn record numbers of visitors; last season’s show was a magnificent take on Seattle’s cobblestone past and an imagined future. Only time will tell what next year’s themes will be.

The Snowflake Lane – The Bellevue Collection holiday show lights up every season on the Friday after Thanksgiving and runs until Christmas Eve. Its free nightly performances are truly awe-inspiring, featuring giant snowflakes, live holiday music, toy soldiers, girls with tambourines and live toy drummers on stilts.

Have you heard about the camel and reindeer at Swansons Nursery Reindeer Festival? That’s not all: The young at heart love the holiday model train set, saying hello to Santa every year, the gorgeous holiday décor and the convenient café that’s surrounded by a koi pond.