Holiday Fantasies Come to Life: 2019 Halloween Review
Holiday Fantasies Come to Life, Burbank, CA
Tonight, we’re going to look at the best Halloween yard display you’ve never heard of. Well, maybe. Actually, if you read our retro-update last year, you will have definitely heard of Holiday Fantasies Come to Life, an off the radar home haunt and Christmas display and holiday decorated shrine that just happens to have incredible yard displays for both Christmas and Halloween.
The bayou scene from Pirates of the Caribbean, with a few creative twists!
We’re not kidding when we say off the radar. Holiday Fantasies isn’t listed on the SoCal Haunt List. It doesn’t have a web site. It lacks much of a social media presence, other than a Facebook page operated by the owners’ daughter. It’s placed or won the City of Burbank holiday decorations contest the past few years, but it’s never been on the local news. In fact, until last year, it didn’t really seem like any media outlets were aware of it. I didn’t even find out about it until after Halloween, when the folks over at Parks and Cons told me about this amazing Pirates of the Caribbean home haunt that was open past Halloween. Excited to get a bonus haunt in for the season, I stopped by at my earliest opportunity, only to find that they had already started converting to a Thanksgiving overlay—giving way to the first ever “Thanksgiving haunt” (yard display) I’d ever really witnessed!
Well, the secret seems to be slowly getting out, though. This year, I know of several media friends who’ve stopped by, and at least a few more inquiring about it and trying to fit it in their schedule. And frankly, I think they should. Without exaggeration, Holiday Fantasies Come to Life is the most incredible, detailed, atmospheric, comprehensive, and stunning holiday display that I’ve ever seen, and even if you prefer actual haunted houses to yard displays, you should still make it a point include it in this season’s home haunt tour.
A glimpse inside the window display, which would be impressive enough just by itself!
Holiday Fantasies is the passion project of Tina and Arnie, a couple who absolutely loves to decorate for holidays throughout the year. Most people are surprised to find that neither is involved with any thematic industry professionally. They’re not Imagineers. They don’t work in the movie industry. They don’t have any employment by theaters. No, by day, Tina is a special education teacher in Gardena, dealing with autistic children, while Arnie is a chef at a local restaurant in Toluca Lake. But by night and their free time, they’re a pair of marvelous human beings who share an almost absurd passion for crafting, decorating, and theming.
A stellar Davey Jones figure, completely hand-made!
Last year, their Halloween and Thanksgiving displays were an incredible take on Pirates of the Caribbean, complete with the transformation of their house into a pirate ship—masts and cannons and sails and all! It was an amazing undertaking, made even more so by the fact that everything is done by just the two of them, using a combination of purchased antiques, props, home-made figures, pre-bought decorations, and lighting. The project was literally transformative. With the exception of their living room window, Tina and Arnie’s house was completely unrecognizable after the overlay was complete—both from its regular, un-decorated facade and as a house in general!
During the winter holidays, Tina and Arnie modified their theme, keeping the pirate ship but turning the famed Disneyland E-Ticket into two beloved Disney movies in Peter Pan and Pinocchio. The hybrid Christmas display featured the pirate ship as the Chicken of the Sea, but the jail elements were turned into the Pleasure Island holding cells for the donkeys, and the window facade switched out to include Geppetto and the Blue Fairy, and a myriad of Christmas figures and lighting set in place.
This lazy pirate pigging it out is also featured.
This year, Tina and Arnie were going to switch up themes and adopt a well-known Dreamworks franchise. They had even begun sculpting the land in their front yard and putting up a castle facade—reusing and enhancing a previous Disney Princesses Christmas overlay they had done. Fate seemed to have different plans, however, as an outlet contacted the couple and expressed the desire to film a documentary about their craft and their endeavors with their home makeover. The catch was that the theme needed to be Disney.
Faced with a change of plans, Tina and Arnie have brought last year’s Pirates of the Caribbean theme back. But just like any home haunter (and any creative, really), they weren’t satisfied merely repeating past achievements. This year’s Pirates display emphasizes the famed Disneyland E-Ticket attraction more sequentially, plotting the various iconic scenes of the ride in greater detail than last year.
Of course, you can’t have Pirates without the iconic jail scene.
Passers-by can spot the shack on the bayou and almost hear the strings of the banjo, the chatter of the Blue Bayou practically nearby. The pirate ship steering through a storm, lit only by lightning, is represented to one side. Opposite the entryway, a pirate pours a bottle of liquor.
The living room window display features the pirate treasure in the caverns after the ride drops, complete with skeletal buccaneer sitting atop the booty. Davey Jones strikes a figure to one side, complete with chest holding his beating heart, and the castle has been repurposed to represent the Spanish fort under siege.
In town, Jack Sparrow can be spotted hiding behind some barrels, and a little further on, the townspeople lining up to be looted are tied to each other by rope. The pirates celebrate their haul later, with plunderers and musicians and even the hat enthusiast all represented. The pirate rolling in the mud with pigs? He’s there too, looking very realistic to the ride representation!
Everything wraps up with the infamous imprisoned pirates scene, complete with Shanghai Disneyland-esque skeletal dog as a twist, concluding with Jack Sparrow celebrating his treasure as we return to the surface. And though the sequence of scenes is not in order going around the yard, the scattered sequence makes the moments even more fun to find and behold. Add to that the fact that everything is lit beautifully and sumptuously, and you have an absolutely spellbinding Halloween display!
Jack Sparrow celebrates his treasure and salutes the pirate’s life.
Holiday Fantasies is truly a production that needs to be witnessed in person to be… well, even then, it may not be believed. All different strokes of people have stopped by, from neighbors to people passing through to designers in the themed entertainment industry to local city councilmen, and all of them cannot believe that all of this is the combined efforts of just Tina and Arnie, with some help from their daughter. Everything looks so stellar and so professional, and yet, neither of them have ever had professional training in this sort of craft. Tina has previously won holiday display awards back when she lived in Downey, but besides that, there’s no accredited accolade that they’ve previously enlisted. All of this is the result of their ardor and their experience and the years they’ve spent figuring out how to make props and assemble displays and figure out lighting and soundtracks.
Tina and Arnie do all of this simply to share their enthusiasm and love of the holidays and of Disney to the public. They don’t aim for fame or recognition—these efforts are really just for themselves and to engage in a beloved hobby. But they’re happy to share that love with the public. Stop by on any given evening, and if either of them are out, they’ll be happy to chat about the effort and the inspiration. Their exuberance is infectious, and their warm and cordial demeanors can have them talking all night if conversation mates are around.
Holiday Fantasies Come to Life is without a doubt a top highlight of the haunting season. The unbelievable effort and detail infused into this display is monumental, and simply looking at everything that has been set out and absorbing the atmosphere of it all is soul-soothing and heart-warming. Bravo to Tina and Arnie, to say the least!
The amazing dynamic duo, Tina and Arnie.
Holiday Fantasies Come to Life is located on 1505 N. Valley St., Burbank, CA 91505 and runs nightly from now through Saturday, November 2nd, from sundown to past midnight. They’ll also be having a live band and street party on Halloween night, for anyone who wants to stop by. Don’t delay, though. Once Halloween is over, they’ll be very quickly transitioning to their Christmas display, in order to have everything ready by the time the documentarian stops by to do a film shoot. That’s slated to occur on Tuesday, November 26th!
Burbank and the surrounding area is laden with amazing Halloween attractions. Don’t allow Holiday Fantasies Come to Life to be one that you skip!
Architect. Photographer. Disney nerd. Haunt enthusiast. Travel bugged. Concert fiend. Asian.
