BY LOREEN BERLIN: Garden Grove celebrated Halloween early over the weekend.<\/p>\n

And that was just fine with hundreds of children.<\/p>\n

Adults, too, who got to play like children for a day.<\/p>\n

The 16th annual Jack O'Lantern Jamboree at Atlantis Play Center sold out again this year, with nearly 900 participants in attendance.<\/p>\n

The first 300 children who signed up for the event received free pumpkins to take home at the end of the day.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

BY LOREEN BERLIN: Garden Grove celebrated Halloween early over the weekend.<\/p>\n

And that was just fine with hundreds of children.<\/p>\n

Adults, too, who got to play like children for a day.<\/p>\n

The 16th annual Jack O'Lantern Jamboree at Atlantis Play Center sold out again this year, with nearly 900 participants in attendance.<\/p>\n

The first 300 children who signed up for the event received free pumpkins to take home at the end of the day.<\/p>\n

However, before that took place, there was an amazing magic show performed by "MagicIAN,” who somehow made a huge light-colored snake appear out of nowhere that morphed into finely-cut streamers of light-yellow paper. The snake was never seen again.<\/p>\n

Although the magician tossed the streamers to within reach of the children seated on the grass around the magic stage, nary a one of them put forth their hand to touch the snake-turned-streamers.<\/p>\n

And what would a Halloween party be without a costume contest? Categories included best over-all, cutest and scariest.<\/p>\n

Two craft-tables were in place for youngsters to make a clever pumpkin hat out of a simple paper bowl and a spider lollipop with some added black pipe-cleaner legs. Then there were inflated bounce houses, carnival games and a train ride, along with pizza and drinks.<\/p>\n

New this year were air-brushed tattoos, and an Instagram giveaway, all culminating in a fun day for children with their families.<\/p>\n

Garden Grove Councilman John O'Neill attended. He remembered being a 3-year-old child attending Atlantis and sliding down the large dragon slide in the 1960s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY LOREEN BERLIN: Garden Grove celebrated Halloween early over the weekend. And that was just fine with hundreds of children. Adults, too, who got to play like children for a day. The 16th annual Jack O'Lantern Jamboree at Atlantis Play Center sold out again this year, with nearly 900 participants in attendance. The first 300 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":1982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5305,3245,5323],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4384,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981\/revisions\/4384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}