Guide · Light trails

Planning a light trail: timed entry, capacity and peak nights

A light trail is a queue you have designed in advance. The lights are the part people photograph. The slot pattern, the throughput of the route and the decision about rain are what decide whether the season makes money and whether anyone comes back next year.

Updated September 2026 · About a 9 minute read

The route decides the capacity, not the ticket

A booking system will sell as many tickets as you tell it to. The route will not admit them. Every light trail has a narrowest point, usually the first installation people stop to photograph or a boardwalk two people wide, and the number of visitors that point can pass in an hour is your real capacity, whatever the car park holds.

The arithmetic is simple once you have measured it. If the route takes 45 minutes to walk at a family's pace and the narrow point comfortably passes 120 people every 20 minutes, then a 20 minute entry slot of 120 people gives you 360 an hour, and a five hour evening gives 1,800. Sell more than that and you have not sold more tickets, you have sold a queue in the dark.

Timed entry, and how wide a slot should be

Timed entry is not optional for a trail. An open gate produces one arrival wave at 5pm and an empty route at 8pm, and the wave is the whole complaint. What you are choosing is the width of the slot.

• 15 to 30 minutes is the usual range. Narrower slots smooth the flow but produce more gate friction; wider slots are easier to sell and explain but let a wave build. Twenty minutes suits most sites.
• Sell an entry time, never an exit time. People walk at different speeds and stop at different things. Promising a finish time is promising something the route controls, not you.
• Publish a last-entry time, and make it earlier than you think. A family admitted at closing walks the route alone in the dark with the lights being switched off behind them.
• Hold back a few places in every slot for the family whose ticket says 6pm and who arrive at 6.25 in tears. Admitting them into the next slot costs you nothing if the slot was not sold to the ceiling.

There is a longer piece on the general question of timed entry against open sessions, and a trail is the clearest case for timed entry there is.

Weeknights are where the season is won

Friday and Saturday nights and the week before Christmas will sell themselves. They are also a small share of the evenings you have paid to light. A trail that opens from mid November to early January has perhaps fifty evenings, and thirty five of them are weeknights.

• Price weeknights lower, and say so plainly. A lower price on a Tuesday is not a discount, it is the correct price for a Tuesday. Two clear prices, peak and off peak, are easier to sell than a sliding scale nobody understands.
• The early slot is the family slot. Parents of small children want to be home by 7. The first hour after dusk on a weeknight sells to them, and it sells better at a family price than at four adult prices.
• The late slot is the adult slot. Couples, groups of friends and the mulled wine crowd will take 8pm on a Thursday if the trail is still lit and the bar is open.
• Tell your mailing list before the public. Last year's visitors will fill the quiet evenings at the start of the season if they hear first, and they are the cheapest tickets you will ever sell.

Parking, and the thing that actually causes complaints

Read the reviews of any trail and the lights are rarely the problem. The car park is. Parking is a second capacity, and the two have to agree.

• Match slot size to parking turnover. If 120 people arrive every 20 minutes in 40 cars, and a car stays for two hours, you need room for roughly 240 cars at steady state, plus the overlap when the early slot has not left and the late one is arriving.
• The gate queue forms in the car park, so that is where the signage, the lighting and the first marshal need to be, not at the trail entrance.
• A park-and-ride or shuttle changes the whole shape of the evening, and it needs its own timetable that the slot times respect.
• Charge for parking as a ticket line or include it, but decide, and put it on the booking page. A surprise at the gate in the cold is remembered.

Rain, and deciding in advance

It will rain. The only question is whether you decided what happens before it did. A wet-weather policy written in September and printed on the booking page is a policy. One improvised at 4pm on a Saturday with 600 people booked is a customer service crisis.

• Trails run in rain. Most do, and most visitors expect it. Cancel for wind, lightning or a site that cannot be walked safely, not for drizzle.
• Set a decision time and keep to it. Two o'clock is common: by then the forecast is reliable and people have not left home.
• Offer a move, not a refund, as the default. A family who can move their booking to Thursday themselves, without ringing you, is a family you have kept. A refund is a family you have lost and a fee you have paid twice.
• Tell everyone the same way at the same time, by email or a text to the bookers for that evening, so the car park is not full of people who did not get the message.

Food, drink and the exit

The trail is what people come for. The last ten minutes are what they spend money on, and they are worth designing.

• Put the bar and the food at the end, not the start. Nobody wants to carry a hot chocolate round a 45 minute route, and everybody wants one at the finish.
• A fire pit and marshmallows at the exit turns a walk into an evening, and holds people on site long enough to buy something.
• Exit through the shop if the site allows it. It is the single easiest way to lift the value of a visit.
• Somewhere covered to sit. December is long and cold, and the family who can sit down with a drink stays, while the one who cannot leaves.
• Sell food and drink as extras at booking where you can, so the cafe knows what a Saturday looks like before it arrives.

Staffing a cold, dark site

• A marshal at every installation that stops people, because that is where the queue forms and where the trip hazard is.
• Radios, not phones. Signal is poor on the kind of site that makes a good trail.
• Torches for staff and a lit route for visitors, and not the same thing. Atmospheric lighting is usually terrible for seeing a kerb.
• The gate in the dark. Scanning a booking on a phone works well at night if the screen is bright and the marshal has gloves that work on it. Test both on the first evening, not the busiest.
• First aid and a lost child point, with every marshal knowing where it is and what to do, briefed the same way so a frightened parent gets one answer.
• Accessibility is a route decision. A step-free route, somewhere to leave a pushchair and a quieter early slot for families who need it are decided at build time, and they are the things some families are most grateful for.

Pricing shapes

What matters is what is inside the ticket, not what the trail down the road charges. The common shapes are a straightforward adult and child price with under-threes free, a family ticket for two adults and two children that is easier to sell than four lines, and concessions for carers, who should be free. Group bookings for a school or a club take a whole slot at a set price. Gift tickets sell from October and are a large part of December for many trails, so they want to be on the booking page from the day sales open.

Resist discounting peak nights. If a Saturday is selling, it is priced correctly. Spend the discount on the Tuesday that is not.

A rough planning calendar

Where booking fits

Booking is not the hard part of a trail, but it is the part that decides whether the hard parts are survivable. Each slot is a session with its own time, price and capacity, so peak and off peak are simply different prices on different evenings and the ceiling holds however popular a Saturday becomes. Parking, food and a photograph are their own ticket types, so the cafe and the car park see the evening coming. When it rains, families move their own booking to a dry night without ringing you in the busiest fortnight of the year, and the marshal at the gate scans them in on a phone.

That is how Hatch works, with the money going into your own Stripe account as bookings are made, and there is more on ticketing for light trails. If the trail sits alongside a grotto there is a companion piece on planning a Christmas grotto, and one on emailing the people who actually visited, which is how next year's quiet weeknights get filled.

Common questions

How many people can a light trail take in an hour?

As many as the narrowest point of the route can pass, not as many as the car park holds. Walk the route at dusk and time how many people the tightest spot comfortably passes in twenty minutes. If that is 120, a 20 minute entry slot of 120 gives 360 an hour, and a five hour evening gives around 1,800 before you take anything off for a slow start and a last entry. Selling beyond that does not sell more tickets, it sells a queue in the dark.

Should a light trail use timed entry?

Yes, and it is the clearest case for it there is. An open gate produces one arrival wave at dusk and an empty route later, and the wave is the whole complaint. A 15 to 30 minute entry slot, with an entry time rather than a promised finish, spreads arrivals so the route, the car park and the bar all see a steady flow. Publish a last-entry time earlier than feels necessary, and hold a few places in each slot for the family who arrive late.

What happens if it rains at a light trail?

Most trails run in rain and most visitors expect it, so the policy is usually to cancel for wind, lightning or an unsafe site rather than for drizzle. The part that matters is deciding this in September and printing it on the booking page, then setting a decision time such as 2pm and keeping to it. Offer a move to another evening as the default rather than a refund, let families make the move themselves, and tell every booker for that evening the same thing at the same time.

When should light trail tickets go on sale?

September for a trail opening in mid November, with your mailing list told before the public. Peak nights will sell in any case; the point of opening early is to fill the weeknights at the start of the season with last year's visitors, who are the cheapest tickets you will ever sell. Gift tickets want to be on sale from October, because for many trails they are a large part of December.

Written for UK venues running a seasonal light trail or illuminated walk. Capacity figures here are worked examples for the arithmetic, not a target: measure your own route, because every site has a different narrowest point.