Pumpkins at Callaway – Gets Its Biggest GLOW-Up Yet

Five seasons in, a $600,000 expansion brings new characters, nightly trick-or-treating and more ways to make fall memories at Callaway Resort & Gardens.

By Andrew McCrory

Some people welcome the fall season by willingly entering a dark building where strangers are paid to terrify them. Gracie Thompson is not one of those people.

“I’ve been to haunted houses before that were too scary for me,” she said.

Fortunately for Thompson—and anyone else who prefers pumpkins without the panic—Callaway Resort & Gardens has built its fall celebration around a gentler proposition. Pumpkins at Callaway delivers glowing trails, towering corn stalks, costumes and candy without requiring visitors to spend the evening peeking through their fingers.

“We call it ‘kooky, not spooky,’” said Thompson, public relations manager at Callaway. “It’s a family-friendly fall event. It’s not scary. There are no jump scares—nothing like that.”

Now entering its fifth season, Pumpkins at Callaway is turning up the light with its largest expansion to date. Callaway has invested $600,000 in the 2026 experience, adding new characters, activities and entertainment across Robin Lake Beach and Cason’s Garden.

The additions are not simply more things to squeeze onto the map. They reflect four years of watching how guests move through the evening, what brings them back and what they hope to find when they return.

“There’s a lot of trial and error that goes on when you’re building these huge events,” Thompson said. “Every year, we’re able to take what we learned and go into the next year saying, ‘Here’s what we liked. Here’s what we didn’t like. Here’s how we’re going to fix it.’”

Among all the questions Callaway has received during those first four years, one has followed Pumpkins from season to season.

“The question we get a lot is, ‘Do you trick-or-treat there?’” Thompson said. This year, the answer is yes.

Children can collect candy at stops throughout Pumpkins at Callaway from 6 to 8 p.m. each night. Costumes are encouraged, giving young visitors another reason to dress for the occasion—and parents one more chance to get their money’s worth from whichever costume their child absolutely could not live without.

The candy stops join an experience stretching from Robin Lake Beach to Cason’s Garden. At the beach, visitors can follow the Enchanted Pumpkin Trail through illuminated scenes filled with hundreds of pumpkins and larger-than-life creatures. Foggy Hollow returns, along with Mini Glow Madness, Callaway’s glow-in-the-dark miniature golf course.

The familiar circus tent at Robin Lake Beach has also been given a new life as Robin Bloom’s Harvest Hall. Part retail space, part food stop and part activity hub, the hall will host games, arts and crafts, and storytelling throughout the evening.

At the center of it all is Robin Bloom, a new character with some Callaway roots of her own.

Legend has it that Robin grew up in Kentucky and traveled to Georgia with her family because her grandfather was a close friend of Cason Callaway. During those childhood visits, she learned about gardening, pumpkins and the changing seasons. Now older, Robin has returned to spend the harvest at Callaway and share what she has learned with a new generation.

Her tale moves beyond Harvest Hall through new characters and towering inflatables appearing throughout the grounds. 

A few steps away, Callaway’s iconic singing and talking pumpkin tree is preparing to host a different kind of gathering. The new Pumpkin Nights Dance Party brings music, lighting and guided dances to the area, inviting everyone onto the dance floor regardless of age, experience or possession of rhythm.

“You don’t have to freestyle full time,” Thompson said. “Somebody will tell you exactly what to do.”

Dance instructors will lead guests through the steps as music plays. The children may still outperform everyone, of course, but at least the grown-ups will have instructions. “You don’t have to be a professional to get out there and do it,” Thompson said. “The kids, all the way to the grandparents, are going to get to participate.”

That invitation extends across Pumpkins at Callaway. The celebration borrows some of Halloween’s most recognizable traditions while leaving room for visitors who prefer their autumn with more harvest than horror.

For those ready to trade the dance floor for a dirt path, open-air trolleys connect Robin Lake Beach with Cason’s Garden. There, guests can wander among the sunflowers, stop for food and drinks at Cason’s Beer & Wine Garden or intentionally lose their way inside one of two corn mazes. One offers younger explorers an easier route, while the other gives more confident navigators a little more corn to contend with.

The maze changes shape each year, although there is little chance of identifying the design while standing in the middle of it. This season’s creation requires a bird’s-eye view for good reason: The paths form a bald eagle in recognition of the newest ambassador joining Callaway’s Birds of Prey program.

Long before visitors begin debating which turn they should have taken, the work of creating the maze is already underway.

“The corn gets planted months and months in advance,” Thompson said. “Toward the end of summer, the corn gets cut into the shape it needs to be.”

Previous designs have included a butterfly and an azalea. Changing the pattern gives returning guests something new to discover while connecting the fall celebration to the plants and wildlife found throughout Callaway.

Visitors can make a full day of exploring those surroundings before the first pumpkin is illuminated. A Pumpkins at Callaway ticket includes same-day general admission to the gardens, with access to attractions such as the Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center, the Discovery Center, the Birds of Prey program and the Ida Cason Callaway Memorial Chapel. Guests can also spend the day biking, hiking or fishing before the evening festivities begin at 5 p.m.

As daylight gives way to fall color, everyone can decide what the season should feel like. For some, it means costumes, candy and jack-o’-lanterns. For others, it is cooler air, sunflowers and the humbling realization that they have now passed the same row of corn three times.

“If you want it to feel like Halloween and you want to be surrounded by pumpkins, you can find that here,” Thompson said. “If you don’t necessarily want Halloween, but you love fall, the harvest, the cooler air and corn mazes, we’ve got that too.”

That broad appeal is helping Pumpkins at Callaway establish an identity of its own. Five seasons cannot yet match the history of Fantasy in Lights, Callaway’s nearly 35-year-old holiday tradition, although Thompson believes the younger celebration is beginning to inspire the same instinct to return.

She remembers visiting Fantasy in Lights as a child, sometimes more than once during a Christmas season. The real measure of Pumpkins at Callaway’s growth, she said, will be guests deciding that one visit is not the end of the story.

“Pumpkins at Callaway is much more of a household name than it was when we first launched it,” Thompson said. “We want families to say, ‘Yes, I’ve been once, but I want to keep coming back every year,’ just like they might with Fantasy in Lights.”

The goal is not to make the two celebrations identical. It is to give people another season to claim as their own—another date circled on the calendar and another set of memories that deepen each time they return.

“I think this year especially is going to help cement its place as that legacy event,” Thompson said.

Pumpkins at Callaway runs on select dates from Sept. 19 through Nov. 1 at Callaway Resort & Gardens in Pine Mountain. The evening event begins at 5 p.m., and admission includes access to the gardens earlier that day. Find tickets, schedules and complete details at CallawayResort.com or follow @callawayresort on Instagram and Facebook.