Harry Potter Forbidden Forest trail returns to Westchester’s FDR State Park

Harry Potter: A Forbidden Forest Experience is coming back to Westchester this fall and will set up again in the woods of FDR State Park in Yorktown Heights. Listings show a 7:15 p.m. session on Oct. 16, with more dates after that.

At night, the park’s wooded paths turn into a wizarding route lit by more than 4,000 individual lights, with over 20 life-sized magical creatures along the way. Guests walk the whole route. It is not a light show you drive through.

Forbidden Forest returns to New York after four years

Back in October 2022, Franklin D. Roosevelt State Park hosted the trail’s first U.S. run, and that run sold out. The 2026 edition comes back to the same Westchester woods, but it does not repeat the old walk. A fresh story in six chapters now leads guests through forest scenes from the films in order. Two features were missing the first time: wand battles that visitors take part in, and a Sorting Hat built at full scale. The route finishes at a gift shop.

What else to do at FDR State Park

The park covers 960 acres and is about 40 minutes north of the city. Its swimming pool is the biggest in the New York State park system, a basin of almost one acre with room for as many as 3,500 people.

Mohansic Lake sits at the center of the grounds. The lake covers 108 acres and has over two miles of shoreline, and people fish there for largemouth bass, chain pickerel and sunfish. You can rent rowboats, and there is a universally accessible boat launch. The park also has a golf course and picnic groves. If you arrive in daylight, you can hike the FDR State Park Road Loop or the Crom Pond Blue Trail before the evening walk starts.