It's been hanging over my head for 10 years now that I hadn't really done the Mission Inn's Festival of Lights "right" yet.
I did pull up and park once in 2014, the night of the "switch-on" ceremony, but I only walked around outside.
There was a huge crowd out front and seemingly a line to walk into the hotel, so I didn't even get that close to it. And ever since, I've been wondering what it's like inside at Christmastime.
I tried once more in 2022, foolishly on a Saturday night close to Christmas. I couldn't even find somewhere to pull over, so I just snapped a few photos as I passed on by, defeated.
This year, I did it right—arriving during the daytime on a Thursday, and taking a tour early enough to see all the decorations inside and out.
It was everything I dreamed it might be, the Presidential Lounge glittering and inviting...
...lit-up trees lining the hotel lobby...
...Santa's workshop, guarded by nutcrackers and elves...
...and a roaring fireplace, festooned with garlands of fir and baubles aplenty. 
After an outdoor dinner at Las Campanas, while the blue disappeared into the black of the night sky, we took another stroll around the property...
...to places that felt so inaccessible to me previously...
...like the Main Street pedestrian mall (where the cupcake shop is and where the museum used to be).
That's where the animatronic jazz pandas play their festive tunes...
...where I'd never even been able to get close enough to know what was there (and what I was missing out on).
The Festival is still bouncing back from its reduced pandemic presence in 2020 and 2021, when the switch-on ceremonies were canceled and no vendors were present.
This year, there's a tiny, A-frame gingerbread house selling treats.
In 2023, the ice skating rink returned for the first time since 2016. But the horse-drawn, Cinderella-style carriages haven't come back.
Still, there are plenty of lights, as there have been since 1993, after the current owners took over (and rescued the hotel from its derelict state). Back then, there were about 16,000 lights—and it grew to 4 million of them in 2015.
Now there's about 4.5 million lights—and over 400 animatronic figures, like elves and angels and polar bears and such.
It's one of the most Christmasy places I can think of in all of Southern California. And I think it could go toe-to-toe with some of the more "wintery" places around the country, too.
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