Family & Attractions
RMN dispatches tagged Family & Attractions.
Thirty Years Ago, Tamagotchi Taught Us to Love Something That Wasn’t Real
Reported Feature
The digital pets that made children worry about a few pixels are turning 30. New Jersey gets a monthlong pop-up, and Times Square gets a birthday party.
Run the Stadium
Reported Feature
The nationwide guide to 5Ks, field finishes, ballpark laps and unforgettable college football runs
Jacksonville & the First Coast
Reported Feature
The big events, fairs, cons, pop-ups, free activities and sensory-friendly experiences to know for late 2026 and 2027
New Jersey After Dark: Halloween Glows, Holiday Lights and Winter Spectacles Through December 2026
Reported Feature
A county-by-county guide to illuminated walks, drive-through displays, glowing attractions, seasonal villages and ceremonial lightings | Reporting cutoff: October 8, 2026
NJ Activities 10/10-10/12 – Broken out by county
Reported Feature
From fall festivals and pumpkin picking to family-friendly attractions, seasonal celebrations, and outdoor adventures, New Jersey offers plenty of ways to make the most of the long holiday weekend with activities for all ages.
Two Haunted Trails, One Night: Wenonah and Oak Valley Bring the Scares Oct. 24
Event Wenonah, New Jersey
A free shuttle will connect the two community-run attractions, with early kid walks before the full scares begin.
No School Monday? Abma’s Farm in Hillsborough Has a Full Day of Fall Fun
Event Abma's Farm · Hillsborough, New Jersey
Hayrides, corn mazes, pumpkins and farm animals offer families a way to spend the Columbus Day holiday outdoors.
Turtle Back Zoo Lights Up the Holidays With a Tradition Built for the Zoo It Has Become
Event Essex County Turtle Back Zoo · West Orange, New Jersey
Holiday Lights returns to Essex County Turtle Back Zoo for its opening weekend Nov. 20-22, turning one of North Jersey’s most transformed institutions into a winter evening destination.
Middle Township Packs Halloween Week With Decorated Homes, Harvest Fest and a Parade
Event Mechanic Street · Cape May Court House, New Jersey
Six days of fall festivities in Cape May Court House move from neighborhood displays to a full-day Harvest Fest before the township’s annual Halloween Parade closes out the run.
Abma's Farm Packs Hillsborough with Hayrides, Goats, Pumpkins, a Headless Horseman and Oktoberfest
Event Abma's Farm · Hillsborough, New Jersey
The Somerset County farm's October calendar stretches from classic pumpkin-patch outings to kid-friendly goat decorating, 21+ carving nights and a flashlight corn maze after dark.
Cape May Halloween Parade Brings Costumes, Creatures and Classic Cars Downtown Oct. 25
Event Washington Street Mall · Cape May, New Jersey
The annual all-ages tradition returns to the Washington Street Mall with costume judging, decorated vehicles and a full afternoon of Halloween in the heart of Cape May.
Von Thun Farms Packs a South Brunswick Weekend With Mazes, Hayrides and More Than 30 Fall Activities
Event Von Thun Farms · South Brunswick, New Jersey
The Oct. 10-11 Fall Festival Weekend combines a Dogs & Dinos corn maze, pumpkin and apple picking, barnyard animals, all-day games and a hayride-access pumpkin patch at the longtime New Jersey farm.
Hawk Ridge Farm Brings Its Fall Festival Back to Lake Hopatcong Oct. 17
Event Hawk Ridge Farm · Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey
Free admission, cider pressing, pumpkin decorating, candle making, face painting and farm animals fill a five-hour autumn afternoon in Jefferson Township.
Pennsville Sets Two October Community Events With Arts in the Park and Halloween Hayride
Event Riverview Beach Park · Pennsville, New Jersey
The second annual Arts in the Park Fall Festival returns Oct. 17, followed by a residents-only Halloween costume contest, Trunk or Treat and hayride on Oct. 22.
Upper Township’s Past Stays Alive at Three Historic Sites
Reported Feature
The Historical Preservation Society of Upper Township keeps local history tangible through a farmstead, a one-room schoolhouse and a restored railroad station.
We Have Started Selling Kids the Childhood We Removed
Reported Feature
Little Diggers is expanding a business built around an almost aggressively simple idea: put children in a giant sandbox, give them trucks and excavators, and let them stay there awhile. The interesting part is not that the model can be franchised. It is what we now recognize as valuable enough to buy back.
Maybe Gen Z Didn’t Stop Reading. Maybe We Kept Counting the Wrong Things.
Reported Feature
New research on Gen Z and public libraries complicates the familiar story that phones, social media and short-form video displaced books. The more interesting question may be whether our definition of a “reader” has kept up with the ways reading now happens.
How Many Times Can You Start Over Before ‘Home’ Means Something Different?
Reported Feature
Blue Star Welcome Week turns tours, coffee, ballgames and scavenger hunts into something more consequential: a way for families who move again and again to acquire the tiny shared references that make a place feel like theirs.
Maybe the Dragons Were Never the Point
Reported Feature
New research on Dungeons & Dragons suggests the imaginary world may matter less than the very real structure around it: a table, a recurring reason to gather, and a group that expects you to come back next week.
At Some Point, You Become Tech Support for the People Who Raised You
Reported Feature
Aura's new Trusted Family Access formalizes a family transition that rarely gets announced: helping an aging parent stay safe online without quietly taking over their life.
Somerset Patriot's All-Stars: Coby Morales and Garrett Martin Earn Their Place Among the Eastern League’s Best
Reported Event TD Bank Ballpark · Bridgewater, New Jersey
Morales turned a full season into the Patriots’ record book. Martin needed only 63 games to make his case.
Eight Hundred Thousand Views Is Not a Safety Certification
Reported Feature
Baby Safety Alliance's September campaign starts with car seats, but the larger problem is much bigger: parents now have to evaluate the authority behind advice while simultaneously trying to use it.
The Problem Isn't Yoga With Puppies. It's Needing Puppies to Sell Yoga.
Reported Feature
St. Hubert's challenge to puppy yoga is really a challenge to the language businesses use to make commercial incentives sound like animal welfare.
Your Cat Has Taste Now. Apparently It Can Curate.
Reported Feature
Fancy Feast and Paige DeSorbo have turned three of her cat Daphne’s preferred foods into a limited-edition “edit.” The products are ordinary cat food. The interesting part is the increasingly human job we have assigned the cat: collaborator, critic and tastemaker.
We Didn’t Just Bring the Dog. We Gave Him a Public Persona.
Event The Rusty Nail at the Beach Shack · Cape May, New Jersey
At Cape May’s Rusty Nail Doggie Pageant, the family pet gets a style category, a talent round, a public vote and an audience. Somewhere along the way, companionship became a kind of public identity.
Sometimes You Need a Doghouse Before You’ll Pick Up the Saw
Event Diamonds & DrillBits · Hainesport, New Jersey
AWA’s ‘Raise the Woof’ gives women a reason to become beginners together — and turns the lesson into something an adopter can take home.
Monster Bash Returns to Historic Smithville, Where the Village Gets a Little Less Alive
Event Historic Smithville Village · Smithville, New Jersey
The Underground brings horror, local art, live music, costumes and a confirmed genre guest into one of South Jersey’s most deliberately quaint settings on Oct. 24.
Last One, Best One
Reported Event TD Bank Ballpark · Bridgewater, New Jersey
The Jersey Diners closed the regular season with a loss, but the final afternoon at TD Bank Ballpark had the kind of seats, noise and family chaos that made the score feel secondary.
Sometimes the Dog Can Play With the Robot
Reported Feature
Cheerble’s new Wickedbone Air lets owners steer play from a phone or hand part of the chase over to an automatic mode. That does not have to mean outsourcing the relationship. Sometimes technology is simply covering a few minutes while the human does something else.
What Changes When the Shelter Dog Gets a Portrait?
Event Atlantic Cape Art Gallery · Mays Landing, New Jersey
Atlantic Cape Community College is putting shelter and rescue animals on gallery walls. The interesting part is not simply that art might help an animal get adopted. It is what happens when an animal normally reduced to an adoption profile is presented instead as someone worth studying.
Six Flags Bought a Roller Coaster With a Fan Base Already Attached
Reported Feature
ArieForce One is getting a second life, and two Six Flags announcements in three days make a surprisingly good case for invention and preservation occupying the same amusement-park future.
The Small Grant That Starts With a Nomination
Reported Feature
Virbac’s Every Pet Project gives two animal charities $2,500 each month. The money matters. So does the mechanism: anyone can nominate, which turns a national giving program into a recurring exercise in asking communities which rescue, shelter or nonprofit deserves to be seen.
The Giant Pumpkins Are Going Back to the Farm
Event Needle Creek Farm Brewery · Pennington, New Jersey
Hopewell Valley’s Amazing Pumpkin Carve is moving from Woolsey Park to Needle Creek Farm Brewery for its 12th year. The venue is new, but adaptation has been part of this oversized autumn tradition almost from the beginning.
Six Flags Wants to Reinvent the Roller Coaster as a Flying Machine
Reported Feature
Thrill Glider, opening at Magic Mountain in 2027, will put riders face-forward beneath the track on a multi-launch course designed to feel less like sitting in a coaster train and more like piloting a hovercycle.
Your Dog Has a Personal Brand Now
Reported Feature
Barkhouse's Dog Fashion Week puts dogs and their people on the same runway. The joke is easy; the cultural shift underneath it is more interesting.
The Cat Behind the Counter
Event 213 Bowery · Lower Manhattan, New York
TEMPTATIONS is turning the neighborhood shop cat into a Lower Manhattan pop-up. The more interesting story is that the shop cat already had a public role long before a brand decided to celebrate it.
It’s Not About the Meat. It’s About Knowing What You Call It.
Event Iron Peak Sports & Events · Hillsborough, New Jersey
Hillsborough’s Pork Roll vs. Taylor Ham Food & Music Festival turns New Jersey’s favorite unserious argument into a full day of food, voting, dogs, music and professional wrestling, which may be exactly why the argument matters.
Your Cat Has an AI Personality Profile Now
Reported Feature
Pet wearables are crossing a line from measuring animals to narrating them. That could help us notice what we miss — or teach us to trust the dashboard over the animal standing in front of us.
When the Boardwalk Trades Summer for Costumes
Event Jenkinson’s Boardwalk · Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey
Jenkinson’s Boo at the Boardwalk returns for two October weekends with trick-or-treating, half-price rides, character appearances, aquarium oddities and a Halloween program built for families rather than scares.
Your Dog Has a Personality Test Written in Its DNA Now
Reported Feature
Embark’s new Behavior Insights feature promises to connect 15 behavioral tendencies to a dog’s genetics and then build a year of training around them. The useful part may be understanding predisposition. The harder part is remembering that predisposition is not destiny.
The Point Was Always to Let Them Go
Event Animal Welfare Association · Voorhees, New Jersey
At Animal Welfare Association's Monarch Festival in Voorhees, the public is invited to gather around a form of care with an unusual ending: release.
Six People, One Tractor, Twenty Yards
Event Carriage Farm · Hillsborough Township, New Jersey
Pulling for a Cure returns to Carriage Farm in Hillsborough on September 13, turning a simple act of teamwork into a visible fundraiser for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Even the Dog Gets a Girl Scout Cookie Now
Reported Feature
Patch Pals, the first Girl Scout cookie made specifically for dogs, is more than a novelty line extension. It is another sign that pets are no longer standing beside American family rituals. They are being formally invited into them.
At Morey's Piers, the Water Park Is Going to the Dogs
Event Raging Waters Water Park · Mariner's Pier, Wildwood, New Jersey
PigDog Puppa Palooza returns Sept. 13 with one last improbable use for a Wildwood water park: handing the pools over to the dogs while the Airshow moves overhead.