Every year, sometime around Thanksgiving, a team of pastry chefs at The Broadmoor finishes building something enormous out of sugar. The display changes shape each season. It has been a 1937 Flathead V-8 Cadillac Touring Car, a canopy boat modeled on the resort's original 1918 lake vessels, a golf cart honoring the U.S. Senior Open, and last year, a bobsled scene tied to the 2026 Winter Games in Italy. What doesn't change is the schedule around it, and that schedule is stricter than proximity might suggest. Living inside the gates of Broadmoor Resort Community puts a resident closer to this tradition than almost anyone else in Colorado Springs. It does not put them on a different visiting list than a family driving in from Denver for the afternoon.
That distinction is worth sitting with, because it shapes how the next few months actually work for anyone whose backyard borders the resort's 573 acres and four miles of internal trails. The gingerbread display, the White Lights Ceremony, the New Year's programming: all of it happens a short walk or golf cart ride from home. Access to most of it still runs through the same reservation system, the same ticket links, and the same handful of open days that apply to overnight guests booking from out of state.
The Same Tradition, a Tighter Window
The gingerbread display itself dates back to the 1960s, according to reporting from The Gazette, and has been overseen for years by Executive Pastry Chef Franck Labasse. Each fall his team spends months sketching, baking, and assembling a structure built from hundreds of pounds of chocolate and thousands of individual gingerbread pieces. Labasse has said in past interviews that he keeps the design secret even from friends and family until the unveiling. The Broadmoor's Vice President of Food and Beverage, David Patterson, has described the project as "a labor of love and an opportunity to get creative and highlight different aspects of the resort."
The unveiling itself has landed in late November each of the past several years, timed to Thanksgiving weekend so overnight guests booking that holiday get first look. What has shifted is how much room the resort leaves for everyone else.
In the 2024 season, non-overnight guests could see the display right away. The first viewing window covered Thanksgiving Thursday and the Friday after it, November 28 and 29, followed by three more Monday-through-Thursday stretches running into mid-December. By the 2025 season, that immediate option was gone. The display was unveiled on November 25, but the earliest a non-overnight guest could view it was December 8, nearly two weeks later, and only on Mondays through Thursdays, with the option closing entirely after December 18 even though overnight guests could keep viewing it through New Year's Day.
The pattern across those two years points in one direction. The Thanksgiving-weekend viewing option for people not staying at the hotel disappeared, and the wait to see the display as a day visitor got longer, not shorter. Anyone planning to walk over and see this year's display should expect a similar weekday-only structure until the resort posts its specific dates, typically a few days before the unveiling, at broadmoor.com/holidays.
Some Events Aren't Open at All
The viewing-day restriction is the mildest version of a pattern that shows up elsewhere on the calendar. Santa's Winter Games, a family afternoon of carnival games and cookie decorating held inside Broadmoor Hall, has been listed as available to overnight hotel guests and Golf Club members only. A portion of proceeds from add-on activities at that event benefits the Empty Stocking Fund, a program supporting local health and human service agencies, but attendance itself isn't open to the general public the way the gingerbread mezzanine is on its designated weekdays.
Other events are open to anyone willing to buy a ticket, which is its own kind of planning ahead. The New Year's Eve Bash in Colorado Hall and the more formal New Year's Eve Gala in Broadmoor Hall, featuring a five-course dinner and music from The Broadmoor Pops, both require separate ticket purchases posted at broadmoor.com/tickets. This fall's calendar already has specific dates on the books: a Sazerac-focused dinner with master distiller Harlen Wheatly is scheduled for the Penrose Room on November 10, 2026, and a Thanksgiving Brunch is set for Broadmoor Hall on November 26, priced at $145 per adult and $50 per child ten and under, with a 20 percent service charge added to the total check.
Golf Club members living in the neighborhood have their own fall window worth knowing about. The resort's current special offers include unlimited golf on select dates in October and November 2026, along with several suite packages, spa credits, and dining credits available only through October 31.
The Calendar Doesn't Start or Stop With December
The gingerbread display gets the most outside attention, but it sits inside a longer run of programming that starts before Thanksgiving and doesn't end when the New Year's confetti settles. The White Lights Ceremony, held on the resort's West Terrace with live caroling and a children's chorale, has become its own fixture of the season, typically falling on the same November weekend as the gingerbread unveiling. None of this requires driving anywhere. The Shops at The Broadmoor sit inside the resort's own footprint, carrying designer boutiques, independent jewelers, and art galleries, and Ristorante Del Lago serves wood-fired pizza and fresh pasta on a patio that looks out toward the mountains, according to Susan Sedoryk's neighborhood guide to Broadmoor Resort Community.
The rhythm doesn't stop with winter, either. Earl Klugh's Weekend of Jazz returned to the resort this past April for its 22nd year, and the Norris Penrose Equestrian Center hosted its fourth annual Winter Polo Classic this past February. A few miles down the road, the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo runs its own seasonal fixtures, including Boo at the Zoo around Halloween and an Electric Safari each winter. None of these depend on a room reservation. They're simply part of what fills the months on either side of the gingerbread season, for anyone who already calls this stretch of Colorado Springs home.
Knowing which parts of that calendar require a key card and which just require checking a website before you leave the house is, in a neighborhood built this close to a five-star resort, its own kind of local knowledge.
If you've got questions about anything else happening in the neighborhood this season, or just want to compare notes on the calendar, Susan Sedoryk is always glad to talk. Let's Connect.
