On October 30, 1924, Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson led a nighttime parade through downtown Anaheim. The two were rivals in a charity baseball game in Brea the next morning, and the procession of decorated cars, costumed marchers and floats ran about two miles. The Los Angeles Times reports that the Anaheim Gazette called it a "howling success." The crowd that lined Center Street that night topped 20,000, according to an Orange County Register retrospective.
This Saturday, October 24, the parade steps off at 7 p.m. on the same few blocks. The festival, the classic car show and the parade route now sit within a short walk of each other, and most of the rest of the week's Halloween events sit on the same blocks.
A festival invented to keep kids busy
The festival came first, and it began as a fix for a local problem. The festival's history page says Halloween in the early 1920s meant soaped windows, uprooted fences and damaged property. In 1923 the local merchants association set up a Halloween festival with games and costume contests to give kids something better to do. A nighttime parade joined it the next year.
It grew quickly. In time for the parade's 30th anniversary, the Los Angeles Times called it the "biggest Halloween party in the nation" and expected 125,000 people. Celebrity grand marshals and Disney-designed floats followed, and KTLA carried the parade on local television for decades until that run ended in the early '90s. Crowd estimates from those years vary from source to source. The Register's 2014 retrospective put 1970s attendance at 75,000.
The rebuild, float by float
The parade that rolls this Saturday is mostly the work of volunteers. A 2023 Register story reports that the tradition declined after the city dropped its funding in the 1980s. Sally and Frank Feldhaus helped keep it going, and organizer Keith Olesen said the revitalization began in 2011.
Two Disney art directors, Jody Daily and Kevin Kidney, found the parade's history after moving into a Victorian home in Anaheim's Colony district. The Times describes them going through a box of archived parade photos at the Anaheim Public Library, learning that community members had already revived the event, and signing on as volunteers in 2012. "Their floats were so sincere, charming and sweet. We fell in love," Kidney told the paper.
Those archive photos now guide the work. Volunteers build and restore the floats by hand, and the Register's 2024 centennial coverage noted that many of them are rebuilt throwbacks. The parade has also widened its scope. The Times describes Día de los Muertos entertainment, including a towering La Catrina, alongside mariachi youth groups, baile folklórico dancers and marching bands. The Bisabuela float, a grandmother figure, appears in the organizers' own parade photography. Bob Sanchez, the parade's Spanish-language announcer, first watched the floats go past the old Fox Theater as a child, and for the past decade he has helped build the newer floats, including a haunted house where the lighting looks like eyeballs peeking through the slats.
The building runs until the last minute. This fall the Register reported that float crews were meeting every Sunday at 8:30 a.m. right up to the October 24 events.
How the day moved back downtown
In 2023 and 2024 the festival ran along Center Street Promenade. Last year it moved to Center Greens, which the Register's 2025 preview described as the new park on Broadway next to City Hall. That same year a car show returned to Center Street Promenade for the first time since 1957.
The 2026 edition keeps that layout. The organizers list the Fall Festival at Center Greens and the Anaheim Classic Car Show on Center Street, both from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with costume contests, local artists, live entertainment, kids' crafts, food and a scavenger hunt. All of it is free.
The official schedule leaves a three-hour gap between the end of the festival and the parade. Here is how the day lays out on the map:
| Time | What | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. | Fall Festival | Center Greens, next to City Hall and the Downtown Anaheim Community Center |
| 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. | Anaheim Classic Car Show | Center Street |
| 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. | City Hall parking lot closed to entry and exit | Anaheim City Hall |
| 5 p.m. | Overflow parking opens | Anaheim High School lot |
| 7 p.m. | Halloween Parade | Anaheim Blvd and Broadway to Broadway and West St |
Parking around a tight footprint
Because everything sits so close together, parking is where the day can go wrong. The route starts at Anaheim Boulevard and Broadway, turns left onto Center Street Promenade, and then follows Broadway to West Street. The organizers warn of many road closures on event day. Their parking guidance comes down to a few points:
- Free structures: the Center Street Parking Garage, across from the Anaheim Downtown Community Center, and Center City Parking CarPark 3.
- Paid structure: Anaheim Parking Center CarPark 4.
- City Hall lot: open, but cars cannot enter or leave between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. A car parked there for the morning festival stays until after the parade.
- Broadway viewers: the Anaheim High School overflow lot opens at 5 p.m., about a 10-minute walk south to the route.
- Side streets: many nearby neighborhoods are permit parking only, and the organizers ask visitors to respect the neighbors.
The English-language announcer will be at the Car Show Stage at Lemon Street and Center Street Promenade.
The rest of the week, on the same blocks
The parade isn't the only Halloween event downtown. Most of the week's events land within a few minutes' walk of the parade route, at Center Street Promenade or at Farmers Park in the Anaheim Packing District.
The day after the parade, Sunday, October 25, is the tentative date for the grand-opening celebration at Ari's Thai Eatery. The restaurant soft-opened its Farmers Park location at 430 S. Anaheim Blvd. in late September, according to the Packing District.
The Downtown Anaheim Farmers Market runs every Thursday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Center Street Promenade in front of The Rinks. On October 29 it becomes Nightmare on Center Street, with trick-or-treating and costume contests. The rest of the calendar:
- Monday, October 26, 7 to 8:40 p.m. Monster Monday Movie Night screens "Hocus Pocus" at Farmers Park.
- Friday, October 30, noon to 4 p.m. A Five Nights at Freddy's escape room in the Central Library multipurpose room, on the Anaheim Public Library calendar.
- Saturday, October 31, 6 to 9 p.m. A Halloween vinyl session with DJ Jose Jurado at MAKE, 500 S. Anaheim Blvd.
A few longer-running events continue past the holiday. Central Library's Cover to Cover In and Out Reading Program runs through November 14. Children ages 4 to 12 who read five books or 300 minutes can earn a hamburger or cheeseburger. At Muzeo, painter Bradford J. Salamon is working on site Thursdays and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. through November 1. His exhibition, "Four Decades of Curiosity: The Versatile Brush of Bradford J Salamon," opens November 28.
At Alton Jones, we follow how downtown Anaheim's public spaces and long-running traditions shape the blocks around them. If you own near Center Street or the Colony district and want to know how these changes affect your home's value, we're glad to walk through it with you. Schedule a consultation, or start with a home valuation.
