Showtime in Wisconsin

take a hayride or carriage ride.

Green Bay Botanical Garden stages WPS Garden of Lights, a nature-inspired spectacular that includes an icicle forest, glistening flowers and a 60-foot-long, walk-through caterpillar. The Holiday Light Show at Rotary Botanical Gardens has brightened the season in Janesville for 27 years. At Wildwood Park & Zoo in Marshfield, Rotary Winter Wonderland offers walking and driving routes, with horse-drawn wagons providing an option.

Glowing with 750,000 lights adorning more than 120 trees, Celebration of Lights is a 22-year Oshkosh holiday tradition. The 1.2-mile drive through Menomonee Park is enhanced by colorful reflections from Lake Winnebago. Paine Art Center and Gardens, occupying a historic estate in Oshkosh, enchants groups with self-guided and guided tours through mansion rooms elaborately decorated with scenes from The Nutcracker fairytale, not to mention 70 Christmas trees. Marking its 17th year in 2023, Nutcracker in the Castle will run from mid-November to early January.

Groups also enjoy sparkling interactive displays in three downtown parks comprising the Milwaukee Holiday Lights Festival from mid-November to New Year’s Day.

Not only are Wisconsin’s parks decked out for Christmas, but so are its historic homes. For example, Milwaukee’s Pabst Mansion, the 1892 home of beer baron Frederick Pabst, gets all gussied up for the holidays, adding festive decorations to accent its Gilded Age splendor. From late November to early January, self-guided tours are offered daily, while special evening tours from Thursday to Saturday include live holiday music and drinks for purchase like spiced wine and hot pecan whiskey cider.

LIVE PERFORMANCE VENUES PROVIDE CROWD-PLEASING OPTIONS

Whether your group is looking for a Broadway musical, serious play or just a lot of laughs, Wisconsin stages deliver.

For decades, The Fireside Dinner Theatre in Fort Atkinson has been a favorite with motorcoach groups. The 2023 playbill features The Music Man, Grumpy Old Men: The Musical, Legends in Concert – Direct from London, Mary Poppins and Scrooge the Musical Dinner with a show is also on the docket at Rosewood in Delavan, a community in the Lake Geneva area. Lunch, brunch and dinner packages (with choice of plated or buffet menus) include a themed cabaret show by Mark and Gretchen Hladish.

Dancing Horses Theatre, also in Delavan, presents dazzling spectacles of equestrian artistry in a 300-seat indoor arena. Horses in a variety of breeds perform with exacting precision alongside their trainers. Lunch and dinner packages are available.

The Marcus Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Milwaukee is home to the Milwaukee Ballet Company and Florentine Opera Company. It also hosts touring Broadway shows, with this year’s line-up including Six: The Musical, Disney’s Frozen, Hadestown and Tootsie.

During summer in Door County, Northern Sky Theater presents original musicals beneath the stars and towering pines at Peninsula State Park’s amphitheater and indoors at the Gould Theater. Door County’s Peninsula Players Theatre begins its 88th season this June. In a pretty garden setting, the renowned artistic company performs Broadwayquality comedies, musicals and dramas in a fully covered theater.

Groups in Green Bay will laugh their heads off at one of the alloriginal musicals created by Let Me Be Frank Productions. Fusing elements of Saturday Night Live sketches and pop concerts, the hilarious shows take place in downtown’s historic Meyer Theatre.

Your group can book a show put on by Kids from Wisconsin Each year, the organization auditions and selects 36 of the state’s most talented young adults (22 dancer/vocalists with a 14-piece show band) to perform Broadway-caliber shows in cities large and small across Wisconsin.