Asian Lantern Festival

Central Florida Zoo & Botanical Gardens is hosting our much-anticipated return of the Asian Lantern Festival!

If you aren’t familiar with this event, the Asian Lantern Festival is the only event in Central Florida celebrating the culture, art, and beauty of traditional lantern festivals celebrated throughout Asia for centuries. This event was created in partnership with Tianyu Arts & Culture, Inc., an international event design and manufacturing company headquartered in Zigong, Sichuan, China. The Central Florida Zoo & Botanical Gardens has been transformed into a dazzling evening experience 3/4 miles long featuring more than 30 larger-than-life displays of illuminated sculptures depicting animals, plants, and traditional Chinese elements. In addition to the hand-made LED-lit lanterns, festival attendees will get to enjoy local food and beverage options, live music, and authentic artisan crafts. This event often sells out, so volunteering is a great opportunity to experience the event and give back at the same time!

In order to make this event wildly successful, we are looking to volunteers to assist across 50 select event dates from November through January. Grab a group of friends, family, colleagues, or alike, and join us in making these evenings an unforgettable experience for our guests!

We need at least 7 volunteers every night to keep the event running smoothly but can accept up to 16 each night. Volunteers will be assisting with directing and engaging with guests. We need volunteers from 5:00 pm-10:30 pm, although you may get out earlier.  We have some great food sold on the property at the Zoo if you need food provided.

We do allow children ages 13 and up to volunteer. However, if they are under 18 years old, we will need 1 chaperone per every 1-2 children because we want to make sure they have an adult with them at all times.

What might you be doing at Asian Lantern Festival?

• We have a variety of volunteer stations throughout the park, like greeting and directing guests, and ensuring guests have an unforgettable night with us at our biggest event of the year!

We welcome both individual sign-ups AND teams! To sign up as a team, please follow the instructions below:

• Select "Respond As Team" at the top of this page

• If you do not currently have an account, the system will prompt you to create one. When it asks you what track to select, please select "I want to volunteer at an event or with my team" and continue making your account from there

• Select "Use One of My Teams" if you already have an account and a team you want to use again OR select "Create A New Team" if you are creating a new team

• If you are using an existing team, you know the drill now! If you are creating a new team...

• Make your Team Name (we recommend making your team name the same as your organization) and check the leader box to make yourself the leader

• Select "Continue" and select the day(s) you'd like to sign your team up for and then select "Finish"

• You should now be on this page: https://centralfloridazoo.galaxydigital.com/user/teams

• From here you can click on "Manage Team" where you can reserve slots, add team members, email RSVP'ed members, and share a join link with your organization for them to register

• We highly recommend using the "Copy Join Link" feature and sending that out to your organization members, that will be the easiest way to get your team signed up

• If you prefer to add the team members yourself, you may get a pop-up that gives you an error message about either them not having an account yet or if they have not met a qualification, click the "Click Here" for your team member to become qualified (qualified means they need to sign our e-waiver) and/or create an account