On Saturday, October 24, the lawn at Las Olas Oceanside Park on Fort Lauderdale Beach turns into a pumpkin patch with an ocean view. The 6th Annual Pumpkins & Palm Trees Fall Festival is back, admission is free, and this year the carnival side of the day is bigger, with a corn maze, five inflatable attractions and a row of old-school midway games. The announcement from the festival's producers lays out a full day that a family can do for nothing, or for about the price of lunch.

What a free day actually gets you

Most beach festivals put a wall between the free part and the fun part. This one puts a lot on the free side. Walking in costs nothing, and so do the photo station, the balloon artists, the lawn games (with candy as the prize), the Oceanside Community MKT, and a stop aboard the MODS STEMobile, the rolling science lab from the Museum of Discovery and Science that lets kids get their hands on actual experiments.

The best free item on the list is the Broward Center Spotlights Trick-or-Treat Trail, which runs from noon to 2 p.m. Instead of a table of candy, children walk a trail lined with costumed young performers from the Broward Center for the Performing Arts' Spotlights program, who sing numbers from shows in the Broward Center's current season as kids collect treats from station to station. It is a small thing, but it is the kind of small thing that separates a memorable morning from a parking lot with a bounce house.

Families can also enter a drawing for a free bike from Freeride, one of the festival's supporters.

The carnival, and the $2 decision

The festival leaned into a carnival theme last year and is building on it. The inflatables this time are the Carnival Circus Bounce, a Climb and Slide, a Harvest Corn Maze, the Big Top Bounce House and a 3-in-1 Sports Challenge. Alongside them sit five classic carnival games: Bank a Ball, Baseball Toss, Down a Clown, Knock Down and Magic Ring Toss, each paying out in plush prizes.

Access to all of that comes through one of two wristbands. The $10 Carnival Wristband covers unlimited use of the inflatables and the games. The $12 version adds a pumpkin to decorate at the painting station. Here is the part worth knowing before you go: pumpkins are limited and go while supplies last, and organizers are steering families who want one to buy the wristband ahead of time at FallFestFTLB.com. Wristbands will also be sold on site, but if a pumpkin is the whole point for your kids, buy early rather than gamble on a late arrival.

Student bakers get the morning

The festival's quieter tradition is also its most local one. From 10 a.m. to noon, the 6th Annual Student Pie Baking Competition puts young bakers in front of judges, presented by the Broward chapter of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association. The competition has been part of the festival since the first year, and it doubles as a showcase for kids who are training to work in the hotels and restaurants that run this side of Fort Lauderdale. If you want to see who might be running a pastry kitchen on Las Olas in ten years, this is where to look.

How the day runs

The schedule is tight and front-loaded, which suits anyone with small children and a nap to protect:

The Oceanside Community MKT is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The pie competition runs 10 a.m. to noon. Festival and carnival activities run 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Trick-or-Treat Trail runs noon to 2 p.m.

That means a family arriving at 10 can hit the bake-off, the inflatables and the trail before 2, then wander the market or walk across A1A to the sand. Costumes are encouraged.

Getting there

Las Olas Oceanside Park, known locally as The LOOP, sits at 3000 E. Las Olas Blvd., where Las Olas Boulevard meets the ocean. The organizers point drivers to the Las Olas Beach Parking Garage, which is next to the park, and PayByPhone lets you extend your time from your phone instead of jogging back to a meter. On a fall Saturday at the beach, plan on the garage filling as the morning goes on.

Why this one works

The LOOP opened in 2019 as the centerpiece of a $65 million investment by the City of Fort Lauderdale's Parks and Recreation Department, and Pumpkins & Palm Trees has grown up alongside it. The festival is presented by the City of Fort Lauderdale Beach Business Improvement District, the group that funds events meant to give residents a reason to come to their own beach, not just visitors.

That is the real appeal. South Florida does not get much of an autumn, and a lot of what passes for fall fun here means driving inland to a farm. This one keeps the pumpkins, the costumes and the candy and puts them a short walk from the water, on a Saturday a week before Halloween, at a price that starts at zero. For a family in Victoria Park, Coral Ridge or anywhere in Broward that wants one fall outing that does not involve a long drive, it is hard to do better.