At $9 on a weekday and $14 at the weekend this is the cheapest full-service pumpkin farm within an hour of Chicago, and you do not need a ticket at all if you only want pre-picked pumpkins — but the evening haunted attractions cost more than the entire daytime admission.
Weekday (Mon-Thu) daytime admission $9 per person ages 3 and up; weekend (Fri-Sun) $14, ages 2 and under free. Evening add-ons: flashlight maze $6, moonlight hayride $6, haunted corn maze $25, moonlight combo of all three $30, fast pass $37. Admission is not required to buy pre-picked pumpkins, mums or concessions. All major credit cards accepted; wristbands must be worn.
Rough cost for a family of four: about $36.00 in admission alone at the posted starting rate, before pumpkins, food, parking or any add-on listed above. Most families end up well north of that once they are through the gate.
Illinois grows more pumpkins than any other state in the country, and while most of that is processing crop grown further south around Morton, the growing culture shows up in places like this. Heap’s leads with the patch rather than the rides: 25 acres of pick-your-own, roughly 90 varieties of pumpkins, gourds and squash including white, bumpy and multicoloured types, and a farm record giant that weighed 731.5 pounds back in 2013. If your household argues about which pumpkin to get, this is where that argument becomes enjoyable.
$9 a head Monday to Thursday. Two adults and two school-age children is $36. The same family at a Will County attraction park on an October Saturday is well over $100. Even the $14 weekend rate here puts a family of four at $56, which still undercuts the region’s gated farms by more than half.
That price buys the animals, the maze, the playgrounds and a walking path out into the patch on a weekday; the weekend ticket adds hayride access. So the $5 difference is not purely a surcharge for the privilege of coming on a Saturday — some of it is content. Worth knowing if a hayride is non-negotiable in your household, because it means the weekday saving comes with a small omission.
The other genuinely good policy: you do not need admission at all to buy pre-picked pumpkins, mums or food. Plenty of farms make you pay at the gate before you can hand them money for a pumpkin. Here, if the errand is a porch pumpkin and a bag of donuts, the errand costs what the pumpkin costs.
The evening attractions. The flashlight maze and moonlight hayride are $6 each, which is proportionate. The haunted corn maze is $25 — nearly three times the daytime admission — the moonlight combo of all three is $30, and a fast pass is $37.
None of that is unreasonable for a haunt, but it does mean two very different visits share one address. A family doing the daytime farm plus two children in the haunted maze is looking at a bill in the $80 range, at a farm whose headline number is $9. Decide which visit you are making before you arrive, and be honest about whether your children are old enough for a haunted maze in the dark on open farmland. If they are not, the flashlight maze at $6 is the sensible substitute.
Seven weeks, seven days a week, 10am to 6:30pm. That is one of the more generous schedules in northern Illinois and it means you can go on a whim. The single exception is the last day: October 31 closes at 2:30pm. Halloween is not a big finale here, it is a half-day, and anyone planning a Halloween-afternoon visit with a 6:30pm close in mind will arrive to find the gates shutting.
The other seasonal point is the light. A 6:30pm close in mid-September is well before dark; by the last week of October it is right at dusk. The evening attractions exist precisely because the dark arrives so much earlier at that end of the season, and late-October evenings on Grundy County farmland get properly cold. Layers rather than one coat, and hats for children who will be standing still in a queue.
A 25-acre pick-your-own field is the muddiest proposition in this batch, and October in northern Illinois is the wet month. Boots, not trainers. Think about how you are getting a large pumpkin from the middle of a field back to the car, particularly on a weekday when the hayride is not part of your ticket — a wagon or a strong second adult is the difference between a good hour and a bad one.
September 13 through October 31, 2026, daily, 10am to 6:30pm, with an early 2:30pm close on Halloween itself. A Monday-to-Thursday visit is $9 a head against $14 Friday to Sunday, so a weekday morning is both the cheapest and quietest window. Note that the weekend ticket adds hayride access, so the $5 difference is not purely a crowd surcharge.
Two to three hours for the daytime farm, plus the walk out into a 25-acre patch if you are picking seriously. Evening attractions are a separate outing.
Daily opening across seven weeks spreads the load well, and the low price does not seem to be buying scarcity — Friday to Sunday is the busy block, and the evening attractions concentrate people into the dark hours in October.
Not published. This is a working farm on US Highway 52 with a 25-acre field at its centre; expect farm ground and soft parking after rain.
Not published. The record notes a walking path into the patch is included with weekday admission, which suggests the patch is reached on foot rather than only by wagon. Call 815-651-7288 for specifics.
You want mechanical rides and a ride park. This is a patch, a maze, animals and playgrounds rather than a fairground. Skip Halloween afternoon too, because the farm closes at 2:30pm that day rather than 6:30pm.
Minooka sits in Grundy County, out past the edge of the suburban farms, so this is a drive rather than a neighbourhood stop for most Chicagoans. If you are coming from the city, treat it as the destination rather than a bolt-on, and let the price difference against the Will County farms justify the extra miles.
Daytime admission is $9 per person Monday to Thursday and $14 Friday to Sunday, for ages 3 and up. Children 2 and under are free. Evening attractions are extra: flashlight maze $6, moonlight hayride $6, haunted corn maze $25, a combo of all three $30, and a fast pass $37.
No. The farm states admission is not required to buy pre-picked pumpkins, mums or concessions. Admission covers the attractions, the animals, the maze, the playgrounds and access into the patch.
The $9 weekday ticket covers the animals, maze, playgrounds and a walking path into the patch. The $14 weekend ticket adds hayride access, so part of the difference is extra content rather than pure peak pricing.
2:30pm on October 31, rather than the usual 6:30pm. That is the last day of the season and the earliest close of it, and it is the detail most likely to ruin a Halloween-afternoon plan.
September 13 – October 31, 2026. Daily. Hours: 10am-6:30pm daily; closes 2:30pm on Oct 31.
Admission starts at $9 per person. Weekday (Mon-Thu) daytime admission $9 per person ages 3 and up; weekend (Fri-Sun) $14, ages 2 and under free. Evening add-ons: flashlight maze $6, moonlight hayride $6, haunted corn maze $25, moonlight combo of all three $30, fast pass $37. Admission is not required to buy pre-picked pumpkins, mums or concessions. All major credit cards accepted; wristbands must be worn.
4853 US Highway 52, Minooka, IL 60447, in Grundy County. It is one of 9 patches we track in Chicago Suburbs.
We track 9 patches in Chicago Suburbs, 2 of which are free to walk into. At $9 a head this one sits below the regional median of $15.95, undercutting 5 of the 6 paid patches we track here.
Its season runs about 49 days against a regional average of 48, so it is broadly in line with the rest of the region.
What sets it apart locally: it has u-pick fields, an after-dark attraction, which most Chicago Suburbs patches on our list do not.
heapsgiantpumpkinfarm.com
Checked August 2026.