Between the parade and the skydiving finale, Community Park fills up with more moving parts than any one visitor can see in a single afternoon. Three of the biggest draws all move on wheels or wings, and each has a story of its own.
The BMX stunt show
StuntMasters Inc. has run professional BMX and freestyle shows since 1999, directed by John Parker, a 10-time X Games athlete, with riders including Cory Walters, Andrew Topa and Frank Ruiz. The team debuted at the festival's 2023 downtown afterparty, then moved to Mace Ranch Park starting in 2024 as the "halfway hoorah," complete with brain juice (pink lemonade) and Woodstock's cinnabread for riders who make it that far along the route. The show is funded by Kim Eichorn of Windermere Real Estate and runs 11:15 am to 12:15 pm on the 2026 schedule.
All aboard the Halloween Train
The Toys for Tots Halloween Train debuted in 2025, offering free rides around Community Park from 11 am to 3:30 pm, running to Nightmare Before Christmas music. Yolo County Supervisor Lucas Frerichs made it happen by renting the California Dream Express, a family-owned, custom-built electric trackless train out of Vacaville, and Toys for Tots Yolo County had a presence on site to match. For 2026, the train returns as what organizers are calling the "Saturday festival headliner," running 11 am to 3 pm.
Live bats, actually alive
Every year, NorCal Bats brings live bats to the festival, and this year Charlie Russell will be at the station with them: part of a rescue and rehabilitation colony of non-releasable education animals that founder and director Corky Quirk has built since starting the organization in 2006. Charlie has volunteered with NorCal Bats since 2019 and has done bat outreach in Yolo County for decades. NorCal Bats also helps lead sellout bat walks along the Yolo Causeway, home to a colony of roughly 250,000 Mexican free-tailed bats, one of the region's genuine natural spectacles hiding in plain sight under a freeway.
NorCal Bats' colony along the Yolo Causeway numbers roughly 250,000 bats, and NorCal Bats has been introducing Davis to them since 2006.
Everyone else in the park
The rest of the entertainment lineup rotates but has some reliable regulars. Noise Violation, a 20-plus-piece rally band described as "pirate-meets-Halloween," was in its fifth year as of 2025. Davis Fencing Academy runs "Zombie Swords & Lasers," led by Simon Pitfield, a Maître d'Armes since 2000, also in its fifth year. Citrus Circuits, the local robotics team, brings "Rotting Robots." Caden Velasquez and Davis Rave Co. run a giant inflatable octopus DJ setup that has been a fixture since 2022. Mirror Image Dance Company performs Thriller and runs a Trunk-or-Treat. Bike City Theatre Company staged pandemic-era scenes along the Bike Loop in 2020 and 2021, returned in person at Community Park in 2024, and their recurring "Groana Lisa" bit is a genuine crowd favorite, part performance art, part running joke.
Watermelon Music, established in 1996 and now located at Lake and Covell, lends sound equipment every single year, going back further than almost any other partner relationship on this list. In 2024 the store dedicated a stage to the new nonprofit Friends of Watermelon Music, complete with watermelon carving, raising $500. In 2025 it hosted a free all-ages haunted house across five rooms with karaoke.
A stage act at the festival, as covered by FOX40's Davis Local Vocals segment.
Other regulars worth watching for: zombies on stilts, SwimAmerica's "Spooky Seas," and the Bike Pump Track, which opened at the 2023 festival through a partnership between Ken's Bike-Ski-Board and the Davis Bike Parks Alliance.
Why it keeps growing
Community Park started with a handful of tables in 2019 and now runs 25-plus entertainment stations by the festival's own 2026 count. Part of that growth is simple momentum, but part of it is deliberate: organizers have said outright that no two years are alike, and every season they look for one new partner willing to bring something the park has not seen before. The Halloween Train and live bats both arrived within a year of each other, in 2024 and going back further respectively, proof that even a mature, seven-year-old event can still add a genuinely new attraction most Halloween festivals would never think to book.
What ties all of it together is that almost none of it is generic Halloween decor. A rally band, a robotics team, a fencing academy, a bat rescue and a BMX crew are not interchangeable vendors pulled from some festival supply catalog. Each one is a real Davis organization that already existed before the festival asked it to show up, which is a big part of why the entertainment lineup feels like a town's own personality on display rather than a rented backdrop.
See the full lineup of stations, times and locations on the event pages, and if you want to be one of the volunteers making sure the bats stay calm and the BMX ramps stay clear, sign up here.
