Free to walk into and pay-as-you-ride, which makes it the lowest-risk fall outing in Erie - but the ride wristband only beats single tickets at about ten rides, and the cheapest way in for small children is a weekday morning.
Entry is free for all ages. Rides are paid: individual ride tickets $1.75 each, a Ride-a-rama unlimited-ride wristband $17.00, and a season pass $42.00. Pumpkintown Jr. (Monday-Friday 9:00am-1:00pm) is a $12.00 ride-a-rama. Scouts pay $12.00 for a ride-a-rama Monday-Thursday 4:00pm-8:00pm with proof. School field trips in October for Pre-K to grade 3 are $12.00 per student. Birthday party packages run $19.00-$25.00 per child with a minimum of eight children. These are the figures published on the farm's own Pumpkintown page, which still describes the 2025 season.
Free to walk in. Your spend here is whatever you choose — pumpkins, food, and any paid activities. That makes it a low-risk stop if you are not sure how long the kids will last.
Pumpkintown is a city fall carnival rather than a farm outing, and understanding that up front prevents most of the disappointment. There is a cornstalk maze, a petting zoo, bouncy houses and slides, amusement rides, a haunted house and a concession stand, plus pumpkins and fall decor to buy. What there is not is acreage - no wagon ride out across a field, no pick-your-own row. It is at the Mason Farms garden centre on Peninsula Drive in Erie, and it has been part of the city’s autumn for a long time.
Entry costs nothing, for anyone, at any age. That is a genuinely different proposition from the ticketed farms elsewhere in this region, and it has consequences worth spelling out.
It means you can look before you buy. If your two-year-old takes one look at the rides and refuses, you have lost nothing. It means adults who are only there to supervise pay nothing - a grandparent can come along for free, which is not true almost anywhere else. And it means a twenty-minute visit is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, which is a relief with children whose tolerance is unpredictable.
Single ride tickets are $1.75. The Ride-a-rama unlimited wristband is $17.00. Divide one into the other and the break-even is just under ten rides.
That number is the whole decision. A cautious four-year-old who will do the carousel three times and the slide twice costs about nine dollars on tickets and should not have a wristband. An eight-year-old who intends to ride everything twice will burn through $17 of tickets before lunch and should have had one from the start. If you have one of each, buy differently for each child rather than defaulting to matching wristbands.
The season pass at $42.00 is worth two and a half wristbands, so it pays off on the third visit. For an Erie family within a short drive, three visits across an autumn is entirely plausible, and at that point the pass is the cheapest way to do the season.
Pumpkintown Jr. runs Monday to Friday from 9:00am to 1:00pm and is a $12.00 ride-a-rama rather than $17.00. Five dollars a child is worth having, but the better argument is the crowd: a weekday morning at a free-entry attraction is a completely different place from a Saturday afternoon at one, and small children do better in the quiet version.
Scouts get the same $12.00 rate on Monday to Thursday evenings, 4:00pm to 8:00pm, with proof of membership. October school field trips for Pre-K to grade 3 are $12.00 per student. Birthday packages run $19.00 to $25.00 per child with an eight-child minimum, which puts a party in the $152 to $200 range at the floor of that minimum.
The address first. Mason Farms has a main farm at Lake City and a garden centre in Erie, and Pumpkintown is at the Erie garden centre on Peninsula Drive. People drive to the wrong one every autumn. No street number is published for the Peninsula Drive site, so pin it before you set off.
The dates second. The Pumpkintown page still shows a September 12, 2025 opening and carries no 2026 calendar at all. General hours for the main event are not published either - only the Pumpkintown Jr. window. So while the price list is unusually detailed, it is last year’s price list, and none of it is confirmed for this autumn. One call to 814-833-9933 confirms both the dates and whether the rates have moved.
Finally, note that a haunted house sits on the same site as a petting zoo and a bouncy castle. That is normal for a carnival of this kind, but if you have a child who finds that sort of thing genuinely upsetting, know it is there before you arrive.
Pumpkintown Jr. sessions run Monday to Friday, 9:00am to 1:00pm, and they are both the cheapest and the quietest option for young children. General Pumpkintown hours are not published, and no 2026 opening or closing dates have been posted - the farm's page still shows a September 12, 2025 opening. Treat all the pricing below as the 2025 published rates until the farm updates.
Two hours on single ride tickets. Three to four if you have bought a Ride-a-rama wristband, which only makes sense if you intend to use it hard. Pumpkintown Jr. is a fixed four-hour morning window.
Weekday mornings during Pumpkintown Jr. are the quiet window by design. Weekend afternoons at a free-entry attraction in a city of Erie's size are the opposite. Because entry is free, the crowd here is not filtered by a gate price the way it is at ticketed farms, so the queues form at the rides rather than at the entrance.
Not published. This is a garden centre site on Peninsula Drive rather than a remote field, which usually means a proper car park - a meaningful advantage over farm parking after Erie rain.
Not published. A garden centre forecourt is generally firmer ground than a farm field, but amusement rides carry their own restrictions that are not listed anywhere we could read. Ring 814-833-9933 to ask.
You want a working farm experience - a real corn maze cut into acres, a hayride out to a field, pick-your-own. This is a fall carnival at a garden centre on Peninsula Drive, with rides, a cornstalk maze and a petting zoo. Skip it too if you have a child who cannot handle a haunted house on the same site, since one is listed among the attractions.
Peninsula Drive is a city-side location rather than a rural one, which makes this easy to combine with the rest of an Erie afternoon instead of committing a whole day to a drive out into the county.
Entry is free for all ages. You pay only for rides: $1.75 per ride ticket, $17.00 for a Ride-a-rama unlimited wristband, or $42.00 for a season pass. These are the figures on the farm's own page, which still describes the 2025 season.
A cheaper weekday-morning session, Monday to Friday 9:00am to 1:00pm, sold as a $12.00 ride-a-rama. It is aimed at younger children and is the quietest time to visit.
At Mason Farms' garden centre on Peninsula Drive, Erie, PA 16505 - not at the main Mason Farms site in Lake City. Going to the wrong one is the most common mistake people make with this attraction. No street number is published for the Peninsula Drive site.
Yes. October school field trips for Pre-K through grade 3 are $12.00 per student, scouts pay $12.00 for a ride-a-rama Monday to Thursday 4:00pm to 8:00pm with proof, and birthday party packages run $19.00 to $25.00 per child with a minimum of eight children.
2026 dates had not been published when we last checked. Check with the farm before driving out.
Admission is free. Entry is free for all ages. Rides are paid: individual ride tickets $1.75 each, a Ride-a-rama unlimited-ride wristband $17.00, and a season pass $42.00. Pumpkintown Jr. (Monday-Friday 9:00am-1:00pm) is a $12.00 ride-a-rama. Scouts pay $12.00 for a ride-a-rama Monday-Thursday 4:00pm-8:00pm with proof. School field trips in October for Pre-K to grade 3 are $12.00 per student. Birthday party packages run $19.00-$25.00 per child with a minimum of eight children. These are the figures published on the farm's own Pumpkintown page, which still describes the 2025 season.
Peninsula Drive, Erie, PA 16505, in Erie County. It is one of 3 patches we track in Northwest PA.
We track 3 patches in Northwest PA, 1 of which are free to walk into. Entry here costs nothing, which puts it in the minority even in a region with several free options.
What sets it apart locally: it has an after-dark attraction, which most Northwest PA patches on our list do not.
One caveat worth repeating: this farm had not published its 2026 dates when we last checked, while 2 of the 3 patches we track in Northwest PA had. Treat any date you see elsewhere as last year's until the farm confirms it.
There are 2 other patches we track in Erie County. All Northwest PA patches →
Map pin is set to the town centre. Navigate to the street address above, not the pin.
masonfarms.com
Checked August 2026.