Adventure Aquarium is putting pumpkins underwater again. Fintastic Pumpkin Glow runs September 18 through November 1, 2026, with glowing gourds both in the tanks and around the building.
New this year: a jumbo candy corn installation, an illuminated photo spot, and an educational program on fall migration. Returning: Paint-A-Pumpkin, the “Bones or No Bones” show, and seasonal food and decor throughout the Camden aquarium.
The migration program is the one to look at
Most autumn events at aquariums and zoos are decor with a ticket attached, and there is nothing wrong with that. The fall migration program is the piece that is doing something else.
Autumn is when a great deal of the animal world is actually moving, and an aquarium is unusually well placed to explain it: migration is not a bird story, it is a fish and turtle and whale story too. Whether that program is ten minutes or an hour, the aquarium has attached a real subject to a pumpkin display, which is more than most seasonal events attempt.
Six weeks, not a weekend
September 18 to November 1 is a long run for a seasonal event, and it is the interesting operational detail. A six-week program means staffing, maintaining and re-lighting an installation for a month and a half, and building the animal-care routine around it, in tanks where the display is submerged with the animals.
Underwater pumpkins are not a neutral object in a shark and ray habitat. Somebody on the husbandry side signed off on every one of them.
Is it included with admission?
The announcement does not say. It gives no pricing at all, and no attendance figures from previous years, so anyone telling you it is free with admission is guessing. The aquarium’s event page is the place to check before you drive to Camden.
Adventure Aquarium last appeared here for Kaleidoscope Cove, its largest exhibit renovation in more than a decade. For the same seasonal question at a zoo rather than an aquarium, Lubee Bat Conservancy’s Florida Bat Festival puts its entire public-facing year into one Saturday in October.
Sources: Adventure Aquarium, Fintastic Pumpkin Glow; Adventure Aquarium press release dated September 8, 2026, issued through Cashman & Associates.
