HOLIDAY SPECTACLE
Hollowed Harvest features 7,000 jack-o’-lanterns
Hollowed Harvest, a new Halloween attraction featuring a spectacle of 7,000 jack- o’-lanterns, is welcoming Capital Region residents to this all ages fall fun experience.
The inaugural Hollowed Harvest event, which makes its debut this weekend, continues throughout the month of October and Halloween weekend at the Altamont Fairgrounds in Albany County.
Guests who visit Hollowed Harvest after dark will be greeted by circus clowns, jungle animals and life-size dinosaurs - all made out of glowing jacko’-lanterns.
These displays were created by the team at BOLD Media, a Long Island-based company that’s involved with events such as hot air balloon festivals and holiday light shows, including in recent years the popular Capital Holiday Lights in the Park at Washington Park in Albany.
Hollowed Harvest is BOLD Media’s first foray into the Halloween event market, and organizers are hoping it will be a hit with attendees.
“It’s a big jack- o’- lantern festival,” BOLD Media founder and chief operating officer Andrew Adams said just before the event’s grand opening. “It’s a whole ton of pumpkins assembled together to make really awesome, different displays.”
Adams hopes the audience will be amazed and impressed when they walk through the fairgrounds. “It’s a really cool show,” he said, describing one his personal favorite zombie scenes.
“It’s everything you’d expect out of a Halloween event, plus all the fun, novelty, dare I say gimmicky displays that are just things you’d never expect to see in a pumpkin, or sometimes even for Halloween,” Adams continued.
On why BOLD Media chose Altamont Fairgrounds for its first- ever Halloween attraction, Adams said he selected this site because of the beauti
ful mountainous landscape, which enhances the atmosphere of the show, and will get even better as the leaves continue to change throughout the season.
“We’ve been talking about doing this for a long time now,” said Adams, who
is excited to watch the vision come to life this opening weekend. “To finally see everything come together, it’s been really a rewarding experience to say the least.”
The BOLD Media team specifically began planning this 2020 event last
fall, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, they’ve made adaptations to ensure visitor safety.
Hollowed Harvest has limited time slots to reduce the number of guests to a
maximum of 250 people at one time, spread throughout the half-mile, one-way outdoor walking path.
Additionally, patrons are required to wear face masks and follow social distancing guidelines while on the premises.
“I feel very confident in the plan that we put forth,” Adams said, noting that the state health department recently gave the event the green light. “Obviously safety is not something to be taken lightly, and I don’t think we have at all.”
Another aspect of the safety plan includes exclusive online ticket sales, which allows organizers to collect contact tracing information and use a contactless check-in process with no cash exchanged.
Since announcing Hollowed Harvest in July, the event has sold more than 10,000 tickets, the company said, noting that several time slots are already sold out throughout the event.
Upcoming show dates include this Saturday and Sunday, as well as Thursday through Sunday for the first three weeks of October and then every night from Oct. 22 through Nov.
1. Hours vary depending on the date, with time slots beginning at 6 p.m. and ending at midnight.
Admission price ranges from $16 to $20 for children age four to 16, and $20 to $25 for adults age 17 and older, plus fees, depending on the date. There is no charge for infants and toddlers to attend.
Concessions, including doughnuts and apple cider, will be available for purchase from local business Cider Belly Doughnuts.
Tickets, which must be purchased online in advance, are available at HollowedHarvest.com, along with more information about the event.