After a five-year hiatus, the Bracebridge Dinner returns to the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park this holiday season.
It's a nearly century-old dinner theater Christmas pageant, famous for both the elaborate seven course meal (that will set you back a bit — tickets for this year's event are over $500 each) and the equally lavish entertainment.
The event began in 1927, and was largely conceived of as a way to showcase the massive dining room of the newly built Ahwahnee Hotel, near the eastern end of Yosemite Valley. For the first two years of the show, photographer and part-time Yosemite Valley resident Ansel Adams played the role of the Lord of Misrule. In 1929, Adams was given the job of directing the show. He stayed on helping with the production of the Bracebridge Dinner as director, actor, and host, for the next 40 years.
“The Bracebridge intrigued me from the start, not only as a creative concept and challenge but because its inherent level of aesthetics and style seem to relate to the emotional potential of the natural scene,” Adams wrote in July 1983, in the foreword of the official Bracebridge Dinner Brochure, noting Yosemite’s “natural grandeur and beauty.”
Tickets are difficult to come by in any year, but especially now since the show paused starting in 2019. Two more shows were added this year, on December 23 and 24, to accomodate demand. As of this writing, there were still tickets available for some dates.
The performance dates in 2024 are as follows:
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
Thursday, December 12, 2024
Saturday, December 14, 2024
Monday, December 16, 2024
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
Friday, December 20, 2024
Sunday, December 22, 2024
Monday, December 23, 2024
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