Takapuna Winter Lights: what it’s like, and what to know

We booked the 5pm session and got there at half past four, braced for a parking nightmare that never came. Shore City had plenty of space and we parked easily.

Two things worth knowing about that carpark. Shore City itself shuts long before the festival does — 6pm Friday and Saturday, 5pm Sunday — but the carpark stays open until 10.30pm. If you’re still there after the shops have shut, you get back to your car through the carpark entrance rather than through the mall, so don’t panic when the mall doors are locked.

Parking was free when we went, which we were pleased about. We can’t find the terms published anywhere, so treat it as a bonus rather than a plan.

We ate first, at Bian — a small sushi and donburi shop off Hurstmere Road, on the edge of Hurstmere Green. It put us right beside the inflatable neon bug-like pieces and a few of the interactive installations. Getting there in the last of the light turned out to be the right call, and not for the reason we expected.

Go early, stay late

The installations are built for darkness — obviously, in hindsight — but the twilight hour has its own thing going on. You can see the shape of the pieces, the shops are setting up, and the whole strip is turning over into evening mode. Then it gets dark and everything changes.

If you can only manage one, take the dark. If you can manage both, the transition is the good bit — some pieces we liked more in the last of the light, and then the whole strip changed character once it went properly dark.

It gets substantially busier after dark. It also feels completely safe — there were police and security walking the site throughout, visibly and in numbers.

It’s ticketed, but there’s no gate

This surprised us. You need a session ticket and they do scan them — there’s a scanning point — but there’s no gated entrance and nobody stopping you walking through. The ticketing is there to manage numbers rather than to control access.

Which matters if you’re anxious about turning up slightly outside your window, or shepherding people who move slowly. Nobody is going to bar you.

The reason for it: more than 60,000 people came over four nights last year and every session sold out, so the windows are there to stagger arrivals. Whether that delivers an uncrowded evening is another matter — by seven it was busy, and still filling in.

And it’s free. That’s worth saying plainly, because everything below is a caveat and the caveats land differently on a free event.

The one we’d go back for

There’s an installation in Potters Park, the small reserve opposite Shore City next to the playground, and it was our favourite of the night by some distance. Smoke, and sound closer to a film score than a playlist: electronic, airy for long stretches, then dropping into something heavy and deliberate. Very loud. It’s the piece that stops you rather than the one you walk past.

Further along Hurstmere Road there are more installations that pull you down the shopping strip, and the planting through the area has been lit properly — it’s not just the big pieces doing the work.

There are performers too

We caught a ballet performance with light-up wings, which was genuinely lovely, and a pair of roving jellyfish — luminous, drifting through the crowd. They’re not billed prominently and we came across both by accident, so it’s worth wandering rather than heading straight for the big installations.

When the dancers finished they stayed out for photographs, and there was a queue of children waiting to stand inside the wings. If you have a child who would want that, it’s worth timing your wander to land on a performance rather than walking past the end of one.

The shops make a night of it

A lot of the retailers set up stalls out front as the evening turns — light-up wands, glowing tat, food. There are food stalls in Waiwharariki Anzac Square too: churros, mini donuts, light-up candy floss, light-up lollies.

Great if your kids are into that. If they’re not, or if you’d rather they weren’t, it’s a gauntlet — the stalls are unavoidable and everything glows.

Public toilets and the playground are open, with extra portaloos on for the event.

Bring spare socks

There’s a splash park in Anzac Square and it is on. Every parent within earshot was calling out some version of don’t get wet — it’s a cold night and the water is not the point of the evening.

One child lost their footing while we were there and went in up to the ankle. If yours is the sort who’ll make for water the moment they see it, put a spare pair of shoes and socks in the bag. It costs you nothing and it’s the difference between carrying on and going home early.

If it rains, come prepared

It rained on us and it barely registered. We’d brought umbrellas, and we happened to be on Hurstmere Road when it came through — verandas most of the way along, cafes and restaurants open and busy, cover and a seat within a minute of wherever you’re standing.

Waiwharariki Anzac Square is a different proposition. It’s open ground and there’s nothing to stand under. You know Auckland: bring an umbrella and it stops being a problem.

We waited it out over ice cream at Duck Island, which was the obvious move and therefore not an original one — a lot of families on the strip had clearly had the same thought. There was a queue, and not much seating by the time we got to the front. Still worth it. Just go in expecting to stand.

And it made the place better. Everything doubled in the wet ground — the installations, the shopfronts, the whole strip — and the reflections coming off the wet concrete gave the place a properly cinematic look. We’d go again in the rain. Just come with the right gear.

The honest part: it’s hard going if you’re not steady on your feet

We went with parents in their eighties who have some mobility issues. Hurstmere Road itself is easy — flat and well lit. The stretch from Waiwharariki Anzac Square across to Potters Park is where it gets hard, and so is getting around Potters Park itself.

The paving is gentle. The obstacles are the things sitting on it. Along the walking path there are seating benches that jut out into the way, and the walk between Waiwharariki Anzac Square and Hurstmere Road has several cable runs under trip covers — low, dark and easy to miss. I caught my own foot on one.

Then in front of the light work in Potters Park there’s matting laid over the mud. It does its job and creates another problem: it sits proud of the ground with nothing easing you onto it.

It isn’t well lit along there either — a strange thing to say about a light festival, but the installations are lit and the ground between them isn’t.

The playground area has its own hazards in the dark. There’s a scatter of low rounded stepping stones — the kind children hop between — set right beside the installation. They’re easy to trip over when you’re looking up at something else.

Here’s what we’d do differently. Go around by Lake Road and come into Potters Park from that side, rather than walking across from the square. It’s much easier going, and the edge there turned out to be a genuinely good viewpoint — we kept asking each other why nobody else was standing over there.

Between 5 and 6, in the last of the daylight, all of this is fine. After dark it’s a different proposition. If you’re bringing someone who’s unsteady, take the early session.

And keep hold of your kids

The playground pulls children in even though it’s dark over there, and tracking your own child among a crowd of silhouettes is harder than you’d think. Some lighting in the playground itself would fix it — even something low and decorative.

It’s a free event and we’re not going to be precious about it. But it’s the one thing we’d change.

What we didn’t stay for

There’s clearly more programmed later in the evening, and we left before it — we had a small child and grandparents in their eighties with us, and that sets the schedule. The silent disco was the one we’d have liked to see.

So take this as a review of the first half of the night. If someone gets to the late end of it, we’d like to know what we missed.

Would we go again

Yes, and we’ll book the early session next year for the same twilight-into-dark run. It’s genuinely good, it’s free, and the garden installation alone justified the trip.