Conway's Halloween Started as a Fix for Christmas. Now It Has Pushed the Christmas Lights Off the Calendar

How did a $500 bag of plastic pumpkins end up canceling Conway's biggest December tradition?

On October 1, the city announced it had canceled the Celebration of Lights and the Under the Lights 5K. The reason had to do with October, not December. A shuttle will run along Marina Drive all month to move City of Halloween crowds, and that leaves no room to set up the lights, which take about 90 days to install. Anyone who bought a 5K ticket has been refunded. The Rivertown Reindeer Run on Saturday, December 5, is still on.

What makes this so striking is how Halloween got started here. Christmas came first.

The Holiday Conway Picked Because Christmas Was Taken

City spokeswoman June Wood told the Post and Courier that Conway spent years, and tax dollars, trying to build a December tourism draw. The goal was a spot on Southern Living's top 10 list of Christmas towns.

"We went to some of these places on the list, Dahlonega, Ga., McAdenville, N.C., and we were doing the same things they were doing. The reality was everybody was already doing Christmas."

So in 2019, the city hung plastic jack-o'-lanterns in the oaks along Main Street. Wood said staff bought out the local Walmarts and spent about $500. She also joked that a lot of local kids went trick-or-treating with paper bags that year. A few years later, City Administrator Adam Emrick was working on fall promotions and swapped "Conway" for "Halloween" in a logo mockup. The temporary name change took off from there. WPDE counts 2026 as the fourth year in a row that Conway has officially renamed itself the City of Halloween.

Here is how much it has grown since. October visitors rose from 165,000 in 2020 to about 456,000 in 2025, according to the Post and Courier. That same October, the city collected just under $400,000 in hospitality taxes. MyHorryNews put the 2025 count at 456,900. Hillary Howard, executive director of Conway Downtown Alive, says many downtown businesses now sell more in October than they do at Christmas. She says restaurants run at full capacity, and many have two-hour waits on October evenings.

That is the backdrop for the lights cancellation. The holiday Conway chose as a way around Christmas now takes up enough of the city's streets, staff and calendar that December had to give way.

The Crowd Runs on a Clock

Last year showed what an October Saturday at full size looks like. At the October 20, 2025, council meeting, Emrick estimated 30,000 people were downtown on October 18 alone. He reported restaurant waits of up to three hours and some kitchens running out of food. Council Member William Goldfinch called the crowd "insane."

This year's plan from the Conway Police Department is built around that pressure, and it runs on a fixed schedule. Restrictions apply Thursday through Sunday, 4 to 10 p.m., for all of October. Northbound drivers can't turn left at Third or Fourth Avenue, though southbound left turns are allowed. Free parking and a shuttle operate out of the former Santee Cooper Power Plant lot at 1330 Marina Drive, which you reach by way of Ash Pond Road. ADA-designated spaces are first come, first served at 1000 Second Avenue. The department calls those hours tentative. It also warns that congestion won't stay inside the window, and it advises anyone just passing through to avoid Main Street when they can.

Visit Myrtle Beach adds two details that matter if you're the one driving in. The last shuttle leaves at 10 p.m., and the shuttle isn't ADA accessible.

Downtown merchants don't agree on what the shuttle will do. Jim Leone of Leone's Italian Ristorante expects people to come no matter how they're routed, "50 to 60,000 people here in a week, maybe more, even a day." Rebecca McGuffin at The Trestle Bakery Cafe asked why a festival this size wouldn't bring people in by bus. Adam Benjamin, general manager at River City Cafe, worries that visitors dropped near the marina won't walk as far up the route as they used to. Bob Martire of Our Next Chapter Bookstore says the shuttle can work "if they run on time and run, reliably."

The Other Half of the Week

The crowd plan covers 24 hours of each week, and a good share of the City of Halloween calendar falls outside them. Most of what's easiest to reach without the shuttle or detours happens on weekday afternoons, Tuesday nights and Saturday mornings.

The church pumpkin patch keeps different hours by day: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays, 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Saturdays, and 11:45 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sundays. If you head downtown on a weekday afternoon, remember that on-street parking has a two-hour limit Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The coffin race is the one daytime event on that list that brings its own crowd. Teams pay $75 to register, and the races are held at the Town Green. It wraps up at 3 p.m., an hour before Saturday's traffic restrictions start. So if you want to see the race and also browse the Midnight Market, you'll be downtown for the changeover from daytime to evening crowds.

Tuesday is the quietest full evening

Tuesday stands out on the calendar. There are no Thursday-through-Sunday restrictions, but three events stack up within a block or two of Laurel Street. A Tuesday evening could look like this:

1. Start at Teal Alley on Third Avenue. On October 6, Cobweb Candy Day runs there until 4 p.m.
2. Head to Chanti's Pizza on Laurel Street for the 6:30 p.m. pep rally and Coach Beard Show.
3. Walk down to Haunticleer Cemetery at 8 Laurel St. for Tunes from the Tombs at 7:30 p.m.

The Riverwalk boats add Wednesday to the list. Crazy Sister Marina runs both its Halloween trips Wednesday through Sunday in October, boarding under the Main Street Bridge next to Bonfire. The Shiver Cruise is a 25-minute trip on the Waccamaw for $25 a passenger, and its scheduled hours are 7:30 to 10 p.m. The Children's Halloween Pirate Adventure lasts 30 minutes and costs $29 for adults and kids 3 to 10, or $14 for children 2 and under. The operator asks for check-in 15 minutes before departure. Wednesday sailings come before the shuttle and the Thursday traffic plan start up each week. One of the Shiver Cruise listings says it runs only through October 30, so check with the marina before planning around a Halloween-night sailing.

What Still Needs the Weekend

Some of October only happens inside the busy window. The Midnight Market runs Thursday through Sunday, 6 to 9 p.m., at 200 Laurel St. on the Town Green, weather permitting, through November 1. The Conway Ghost Walk runs October 14 through 16 from 6 to 8 p.m., starting at the Conway Visitor Center. Tickets are $29 and require a reservation, and the October 14 and 16 tours already show as sold out. Witches, Wizards & Wine on October 8 is sold out too. If these are on your list, the takeaway from this year is that tickets need to be bought weeks ahead, not when the month starts.

Not everything downtown has a time slot. The decorations are on view around the clock with no tickets. The Great Pumpkin Oak near the Main Street Bridge holds jack-o'-lanterns shared by residents for the city display. The city hasn't published 2026 drop-off details that I could find, so call City Hall before you carve one for the tree.

The shops that get the most out of October are the same ones you can visit any weekday. Stella's Homemade Ice Cream opened at 1101 Fourth Ave. in 2023. It ran out of ice cream that first October and had to bring some in from its Murrells Inlet store. Owner Haley Williamson now makes five monster-themed flavors for the season and says a strong October carries the shop through the slower winter months. Emily Smith has run Good Day Sunshine at 1011 Third Ave. for ten years. She says her October foot traffic is "10 times what we saw in October just 10 years ago." Her Halloween candles sold out last year. If you stop in at 2 p.m. on a Monday, you'll be shopping on the same block where weekend visitors wait in line.

If December feels a little empty without the Celebration of Lights this year, it helps to know the reason. The city made that call so it could keep running the October that its businesses now rely on, and the Reindeer Run on December 5 is still on.

If you want to talk through how Conway's October rhythm plays out on the streets around Main, Laurel and Fourth Avenue before deciding where in town you'd like to live, I'd be glad to walk you through it street by street. Trenette Tucker is here when you're ready. Schedule Your Personalized Consultation.