Yosemite: Bracebridge Dinner begins Dec. 13 [Updated]

Squire Bracebridge and his household request your attendance at a most unusual feast this holiday season, but you’d better book a seat soon. The famous and long-running dinner at Yosemite’s Ahwahnee hotel, though pricey, is always popular. Last year, most of the eight evenings sold out. [Corrected at 11:53 a.m. Nov. 17: Previous versions of this post, along with the headline, said the dinner was in its 80th or 84th season. It began in 1927 but missed some war years.]

In recounting her experience at a 2008 Bracebridge Dinner, L.A. Times staff writer Sharon Bernstein called the tradition, which has been going since 1927 (it took a two-year hiatus during World War II), “part corny, part historical, wonderfully musical, very California and perfectly Christmas.”
[A scene from last year's Bracebridge Dinner is shown above. Click here for a related photo gallery.]

For the event, the Ahwanee’s Dining Room transforms into the Great Hall at Squire Bracebridge’s manor, where guests are treated to a four-hour, seven-course Christmas feast and pageant featuring more than 100 performers.

Extravagant? Perhaps, and the price tag follows suit: Dinner admission is $399 per person, including tax and tip. The dinners this year, all starting at 6 p.m., are scheduled for Dec. 13, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24 and 25. Last year, most of the dinner performances sold out, and this year the dinners on Dec. 18, 20, 22 and 25 are already sold out, said event spokeswoman Diana Gil-Osorio.

If you can’t attend a dinner, try to make one of the free concerts held in the Ahwahnee’s Great Lounge, which will feature “an array of popular operatic arias, Broadway standards and holiday favorites, performed by the array of talented professionals featured in the Bracebridge Dinner,” said Gil-Osorio. These are scheduled at 8 p.m. on Dec. 15, 17, 19 and 21, and at 3 p.m. on Dec. 23.

See here for more details on tickets as well as hotel packages.

Contact: DNC Parks & Resorts at Yosemite, (801) 559-4949

– Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times

Photo: “Peacock pie” at the Bracebridge Dinner 2008. Credit: Lani Spicer / Andrea Fulton Productions and Kenny Karst / DNC Parks & Resorts at Yosemite Inc.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 at 11:47 am by Susan Derby and is filed under California, Festival, Gourmet, Hotels, National Parks, Sierra Nevada, Winter, Yosemite National Park. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.