Halloween in the USA
 

Hello everyone
I have been using this site for years in order to plan and book my holidays all over the world. This is the first time I've posted a topic though!
My husband and I are preparing for a 4 week trip through the South-East USA in October this year. By chance we will still be there for Halloween and would really love to see how the Americans do it!! We see it so much on TV and the movies and it isn't really celebrated in Australia so it would be a great novelty for us.
Our current plan is a road trip from New Orleans to Savannah for a couple of weeks, then through Florida (Orlando, Miami) and a few days in Jamaica in between.
Anyway - I'm trying to plan the best place to spend Halloween so that I can work my holiday around this .
My options at the moment are Miami, Orlando (I thought this might be cool because of the Disney factor?), or LA (as we will be flying out of there on the 1st November). I have read that Salem is the place to be but that won't be an option on our current trip.
Would appreciate any thoughts!!

I think you might need to just go to a neighborhood about 6PM and watch the little ones go from house to house to beg for treats. Disney does have a big celebration I believe in the Parks--I think that was when our grands were there a year or so ago. At least in our town, there is not a real central celebration or parade or anything.

do you have children? cities will have haunted houses run by charities as fund raisers and some streets will be very decorated, do a search of the city you will be in on Halloween.

Most towns/cities have an area full of bars and restaurants. Most of the areas will have a Halloween party with contests/prizes/fun time.

This year Halloween falls on Thursday so most of the bars will have parties on Friday 11/1. Here in Sarasota we will have Main Street blocked off with live music stages, food vendors and bars on the street. It's a blast.

And regardless of how great your costume is, there is always a better one, but that's part of the fun.

You can always join us for our outdoor/Halloween private party and then we will all head out downtown around 11pm.

Sarasota, FL.

Have a wonderful trip! You will have fun regardless of where you end up on Halloween night.

WDW is probably your best bet if you want to actually do something for Halloween. It's not a big event in many places, just a chance for children to go trick-or-treating in their immediate neighborhood (these days mostly with pre-arranged visits to known friends and neighbors). It's unlikely that you'd see how it's "celebrated" in a typical residential community regardless of where you are.

But both Disney and Universal Orlando have nighttime events on Halloween that can be fun. In other cities (notably LA and NYC), there are fairly big parades and street parties on Halloween, but these are by no means "typical" and are geared almost entirely to adults. As others have pointed out, bars and clubs are the best options for adults since many of them have Halloween dress-up parties.

Another option might be Savannah. That's a city that loves to have a party, and it's possible something might be going on there.

This year, October 31 is on a Thursday. Some communities designate a weekend date for the holiday celebrations, and/or a specific time interval for the kids to do their Trick Or Treating rounds. My part of the country doesn't so this, I was astonished to learn about it -- it seems as impossible as rescheduling Christmas -- but the response that I got was "Well, if the town doesn't set a time, how would the kids know when to go out?" Um, after supper on Halloween?!

Anyway, check with local customs. You could get to see multiple Halloweens or miss it entirely!

As noted above, some communities or commercial enterprises set up "Haunted houses" that operate usually on a few weekends in October. If you are near Palm Springs, FL, go to the one run by the kids at G-STAR School of the Arts. The setup by talented high-schoolers can't be beat as an American holiday experience:

http://www.xscreamhalloween.com/dates.html

If you are flying out of LA on the 1st, I certainly wouldn't screw around with staying on the east coast to celebrate/observe Halloween on the night before that flight. Fly to LA, find somewhere around there for Halloween. It's celebrated everywhere, this isn't a holiday where you 'need' to be somewhere in Florida to get the full effect.

If you think Disney would be the place to be, then go to the one in Anaheim.

LA is only the second largest metropolitan area in the US so there may be something going on there somewhere.

Go googling on Los Angeles area Halloween celebrations and you should get about 5 billion hits.

And no, you likely won't get multiple Halloweens with trick-or-treaters out on different nights. That's just in various hinterlands, not major cities or their surrounds.

And if you really want to see some cuckoo-nutty things for Halloween, just come by my house - the wife decorates the whole property and will likely add various animatronic scary creatures this year on top of the freak show we usually have.

The main ways people celebrate Halloween (aside from places with big events, like Disney) are

1) with kids - trick-or-treating in their neighborhood

2) more "adult" celebrations, either parties at someone's house or at bars

Option 2b is probably your better bet, if you don't find a major event like Disney's. (If I saw a random pair of adults wandering my neighborhood on Halloween, I'd be concerned - my first thought would not be that they're Australian tourists!) You can find bars with costume parties in any decent-sized city. For some people it's a chance to be creative, and for some it's a chance to dress in skimpy outfits they'd never wear on any other night.

You could find a residential area to drive through that night just to check out the houses - not all of them will be decorated (I never do), but some people go all out. Just drive slowly on account of the kids likely to be in the street!

The only time I remember Halloween getting "postponed" around here was one year when it was on a Sunday. Even then I didn't really understand why.

Postponed? who said that?

The children and few parties will still do their thing on 10/31, BUT the main bars that are sponsored by alcohol distributors to hold these parties will do it on Friday 11/1. Why you ask? because they want the most bang for their $ and Friday night seems like a better idea. Thursday night is a "school night" for most adults.

I think theme parks might offer the best OTT experience. Disneyland or Universal perhaps if you're already going to be in LA.

http://www.halloweenhorrornights.com/hollywood/2012/

https://disneyland.disney.go.com/eve...eyland-resort/

If that is something that interests you, check when tickets become available for sale. Weekend nights and certainly Halloween will often sell out.

AA, I was mainly referring to Anonymous's post, not questioning yours. Our neighborhood's official trick-or-treat time got moved to a different day that year.

Here in Nashville, I can't imagine that the bars won't be packed on Halloween night (Thursday is just Friday eve...), but that might be different for different parts of the country.

"Thursday is just Friday eve"

Yep, that's how it is in major cities.