Somebody in your office has been handed the holiday party. If that somebody is you, here is the short version: you can put a group on a heated vintage trolley, drive them around the best Christmas lights in Minneapolis, and start and finish the whole thing inside a Gilded Age mansion. No banquet room. No hotel ballroom carpet. No one standing near the door wondering when they can leave.
This is how the Holiday Light Ride works for groups, office parties and any other gathering of people who would rather not sit at a round table all evening.
Two rides, and one of them is built for a party
There are two versions, and picking the right one is most of the decision.
The NAUGHTY Holiday Party Ride — 21+, two hours
This is the one for a work party, a girls’ night, a team night out or any group that wants a drink in hand. It is adults only and runs two hours — part lights tour, part rolling holiday party. The evening starts with holiday cocktails inside the historic Pillsbury Club before anyone boards.
Santa’s NICE Ride — all ages, one hour
The family version. One hour, Christmas music, festive narration, and guests vote for their favourite decorated house along the way. This is the right call if the “group” includes anybody’s grandparents or anybody’s toddler. Our guide to holiday lights tours that work with kids goes deeper on that side.
Both rides are on a heated vintage trolley, which in a Minnesota December is not a small detail.
Why the boarding point matters more than you think
Most holiday light tours pick you up in a parking lot or outside a bar. Ours starts inside the restored Charles S. Pillsbury Mansion — and for a group, that difference is the whole evening.
People arrive at different times. Somebody is always twenty minutes late. In a parking lot, that is twenty minutes of standing in the cold. At the Pillsbury Club, the early arrivals are having a cocktail in a Gilded Age bar under a chandelier, browsing a holiday market, or ordering dinner and appetizers. Nobody is waiting; they are already at the party.
What is waiting inside:
- A holiday market with handmade gifts from more than fifty Minnesota artists — which quietly solves several people’s shopping.
- Handcrafted holiday cocktails.
- Dinner or appetizers, if you want to make an evening of it.
- One of the most beautiful historic mansions in Minneapolis, decorated for the season.
- Free parking just across the street — the single most underrated feature of any group event downtown.
For the record, the Pillsbury Club is not a theatre, a ballroom or a banquet hall. It is a private club in a 1916 English manor house, and it is where the trolley pulls up.
Booking for a group
Two routes, depending on your numbers and how much control you want over the evening.
Book seats on a scheduled ride. If you have a handful of people, simply book together through the box office. Check the tour calendar for which nights are running. These sell out — December weekends go first, and the page says as much.
Take the whole trolley. For a real office party, a private rental means your group, your night, and no strangers voting on the lights with you. Start at group tours and private rentals and tell us the headcount and the date you have in mind.
Either way, book earlier than feels necessary. Holiday parties get scheduled in October and the calendar fills from the weekends inward.
Making it a whole night out
Groups coming in from out of town, or anyone who does not fancy driving home after the NAUGHTY ride, has two good options a short distance away.
300 Clifton is a historic mansion bed and breakfast in Loring Park — the Eugene J. Carpenter house, with a four-season garden hot tub and seven distinct guest rooms. It is the only mansion in Minneapolis you can tour and sleep in, which makes it a natural pairing with a mansion-based trolley ride.
Oakland’s on 9th is a furnished studio apartment hotel in a restored 1889 brownstone downtown — useful if colleagues are in town for several nights rather than one.
Before or after, the rest of the city is right there. Our lists of the best cocktail bars in Minneapolis, the best speakeasies, the best restaurants for atmosphere, the best steakhouses and the best date ideas are all a good place to build the rest of the evening.
If the holidays are not the occasion
The same trolley runs all year, and the same group logic applies. The Candlelight Ghost Tour, the True Crime Tour, the Gilded Age Mansion Tour and the narrated scenic tour all take private bookings. If you are still deciding what to do with a visiting group, our roundups of things to do in Minneapolis with kids and things to do in Minneapolis generally are the place to start.
Book the holiday lights trolley
Pick your ride, pick your night, and get the date locked in: the Holiday Light Ride page has both options, or call us at (612) 900-3220 if you would rather talk through a private rental. The trolley boards at 100 E 22nd Street, Minneapolis — and yes, the parking is free and it is right across the street.