The Haunted Floating Festival is Disney Dreamlight Valley at its most playful and most punishing, blending cozy exploration with puzzle logic that actually expects you to pay attention. Unlike past festivals that leaned heavily on fetch quests and currency grinding, this event drops you into a shifting, supernatural playground where timing, positioning, and reading environmental tells matter. If you’re here to 100 percent the event, you’re going to need more than just a full stamina bar and good vibes.
Event Duration and Daily Structure
The Haunted Floating Festival is a limited-time event that runs for just under three weeks, with the exact countdown visible on the in-game Events tab the moment it goes live. That timer is not generous, especially because several puzzles are hard-gated by daily resets rather than raw playtime. Miss too many days and you’ll feel the pressure fast, particularly if you’re chasing every cosmetic, motif, and furniture reward.
Each real-world day unlocks new spectral interactions across the floating islands, meaning you can’t brute-force the entire event in a single weekend. This is intentional pacing, not RNG cruelty, and understanding that cadence early prevents a lot of late-event panic. Log in daily, even if you only have ten minutes, because some progression flags only trigger on first login of the day.
Unlock Requirements and Entry Conditions
Accessing the Haunted Floating Festival requires more than just updating the game and loading in. You must have unlocked the Forgotten Lands biome and completed Merlin’s mid-game questline involving magical anomalies, as the festival’s core mechanics build directly on those systems. If Merlin is still handing out basic enchantment tutorials, you’re not event-ready yet.
You’ll also need all three Royal Tools upgraded to at least their second enchantment tier, since multiple puzzles rely on tool-based interactions that bypass normal hitbox rules. Players who rush in without these upgrades will see puzzle objects but won’t be able to interact with them, which has already caused a lot of confusion. The game does not warn you upfront, so checking your tool progression beforehand saves a frustrating backtrack.
How This Festival Breaks From Past Events
What truly sets the Haunted Floating Festival apart is its puzzle-first design philosophy. Previous festivals focused on repetitive tasks, currency loops, and NPC routing efficiency, but this event leans hard into spatial reasoning and environmental manipulation. Floating platforms phase in and out, haunted objects respond to player proximity rather than direct interaction, and several solutions depend on observing ghostly patterns instead of brute interaction.
There’s also a heavier emphasis on failure states. Triggering a puzzle incorrectly can temporarily lock it, forcing you to wait for a reset or solve a secondary condition to re-enable it. That design adds real stakes without punishing experimentation too harshly, but it does mean careless button-mashing will slow your progress.
Most importantly, rewards are tied directly to puzzle mastery rather than volume of play. Completing optional challenge variants unlocks exclusive cosmetics that cannot be obtained through trading or later catch-up mechanics. For completionists, this festival isn’t just another seasonal distraction; it’s a skill check wrapped in spooky charm, and it demands a more thoughtful approach than anything Dreamlight Valley has done before.
Getting Started: How to Trigger the Festival, NPC Involvement, and Initial Quest Setup
Once your tools and biomes are in order, the Haunted Floating Festival doesn’t begin with a pop-up or splash screen. Instead, it triggers quietly the first time you load into the Valley after the event goes live, provided it’s nighttime in-game. If you log in during the day, the festival simply won’t initialize, which has tripped up a lot of players who assume something is bugged.
The easiest workaround is to use the in-game time offset in the settings menu or wait until night naturally rolls in. When the festival is active, you’ll immediately notice spectral lanterns drifting above the Plaza and Forgotten Lands, along with an eerie audio cue that overrides the standard biome music. That’s your confirmation the backend flags are live and puzzles can be interacted with.
Which NPCs Are Involved (And Who Is Mandatory)
Merlin is the anchor NPC for the entire event, and speaking to him is non-negotiable. The initial quest, “A Festival That Shouldn’t Float,” auto-adds to your quest log the moment you enter the Forgotten Lands at night, but it will not progress until you manually talk to Merlin. Skipping this step is the single biggest reason players report puzzle objects not responding.
After Merlin, the game pulls in The Fairy Godmother and Jack Skellington as secondary quest-givers, but their involvement is conditional. If Jack is unlocked, he provides optional challenge modifiers tied to harder puzzle variants and better rewards. If he isn’t unlocked, those challenges are simply removed rather than blocked, so you’re not hard-gated out of completion.
Accepting the Festival Quest and Unlocking Puzzle Nodes
Once Merlin briefs you, he’ll place three Haunted Anchors across the Valley map. These function like puzzle hubs, not one-off interactions, and each anchor controls multiple floating puzzle platforms nearby. You must interact with all three anchors to fully initialize the festival; activating only one will leave later puzzles invisible or phased out.
Each anchor also establishes a soft progression order. While you can technically attempt puzzles out of sequence, doing so often leads to locked states or missing interaction prompts. Following Merlin’s suggested order prevents unnecessary resets and ensures the game properly tracks your completions for reward payouts.
Early Pitfalls That Can Soft-Lock Progress
The festival is unforgiving if you rush dialogue or mash through prompts. Skipping Merlin’s explanation causes key environmental flags to remain disabled, meaning haunted objects won’t respond to proximity triggers. If this happens, backing out to the title screen and reloading usually fixes it, but it wastes valuable event time.
Another common mistake is equipping the wrong Royal Tool when first approaching a puzzle. Some haunted objects only register the tool that initialized them, and swapping tools mid-interaction can break the sequence. Lock in the correct tool before engaging, and finish the interaction cleanly to avoid forced resets.
When the Festival Is Fully “Live”
You’ll know the Haunted Floating Festival is fully operational once your quest log updates with multiple active puzzle objectives and a visible Festival Progress meter appears. At that point, all reward tiers are available, and optional challenge variants can be toggled via Jack or Merlin. From here on, success is entirely about execution, observation, and understanding how each puzzle layer builds on the last.
Puzzle Hub Explained: Understanding Floating Islands, Spectral Platforms, and Festival Mechanics
With the festival fully live, the Haunted Anchors stop being simple quest markers and become your central control nodes. Every floating island, shifting platform, and haunted obstacle you see in the sky is governed by invisible rules tied back to these hubs. Understanding how those rules work is the difference between clean clears and hours of confused backtracking. This section breaks down the logic so you can solve puzzles efficiently instead of brute-forcing interactions.
How Floating Islands Actually Function
Floating islands are not static locations; they are phased puzzle instances that load based on your current festival state. When you activate an anchor, it spawns a cluster of islands tied to that hub’s completion tier, meaning some islands literally do not exist yet. If you try to approach an island too early, you’ll either see empty sky or ghostly silhouettes with no collision.
Each island is also assigned a completion flag. Leaving mid-puzzle or teleporting away can reset that island without warning, especially if you haven’t triggered its internal checkpoint. Treat every island like a self-contained dungeon and finish what you start before fast traveling.
Spectral Platforms and Movement Rules
Spectral platforms are governed by proximity and timing, not raw interaction. Most only solidify when you approach from the intended angle, and sprinting or gliding too aggressively can cause them to despawn under your feet. This is not a bug; the game is checking movement speed and direction to enforce puzzle flow.
A key mechanic many players miss is platform memory. Once a spectral platform is activated, it remains solid for a short window even if you step off it. Use this grace period to chain jumps instead of waiting for full reactivation cycles, which saves time and reduces fall resets.
Anchor-Specific Puzzle Logic
Each Haunted Anchor specializes in a different puzzle language. One focuses on traversal and timing, another on tool-based interactions, and the third on environmental manipulation like light, shadows, and object rotation. Mixing mechanics between anchors does not work; the game will ignore inputs that don’t match the anchor’s logic set.
If a puzzle feels unresponsive, check which anchor controls that island and adjust your approach. Players often assume a glitch when, in reality, they’re using the wrong mental model for that hub’s design philosophy.
Festival Mechanics That Control Difficulty Scaling
The Festival Progress meter does more than track rewards; it actively modifies puzzle behavior. As your progress increases, optional challenge modifiers activate, adding extra hazards, tighter timing windows, or additional steps. These modifiers are opt-in, but they dramatically increase token and cosmetic payout efficiency.
If you’re playing casually, ignore modifiers until the base puzzles are cleared. Completionists should toggle them as soon as they unlock, since replaying islands with modifiers stacks rewards without resetting core progress.
Required Conditions and Hidden Checks
Many festival puzzles have invisible prerequisites. Time of day, companion bonuses, and even recent tool usage can affect whether an interaction appears. Lantern-based puzzles, for example, will not initialize if you haven’t used the Royal Torch within the last few minutes.
To avoid wasted attempts, refresh your state before tackling a new island. Swap tools, wait a few seconds, and re-approach from the intended path. This forces the game to re-evaluate conditions and prevents dead interactions that look like soft-locks.
Common Mistakes That Break Puzzle Flow
The most common failure point is overusing glide. While gliding feels safe, many islands require grounded landings to trigger completion flags, and gliding past them skips those checks entirely. Another frequent error is interacting with decorative haunted objects, which are visual noise and not tied to puzzle logic.
Focus on objects that react with audio cues or particle effects. If something is silent and static, it’s almost never part of the solution, no matter how suspicious it looks.
Optimizing Puzzle Clears Before the Event Ends
Efficiency comes from batching puzzles by anchor rather than bouncing across the map. Clear all islands tied to one anchor in a single session to avoid respawn quirks and wasted traversal time. This also minimizes the risk of progress flags desyncing during long play sessions.
Players racing the event timer should prioritize traversal islands first. They unlock movement shortcuts that make later puzzle runs faster, which compounds time savings as you chase the final reward tiers.
Puzzle Walkthrough #1 – Lanterns of the Lost: Correct Activation Order, Visual Clues, and Reset Traps
Lanterns of the Lost is the first true logic check of the Haunted Floating Festival, and it’s designed to punish players who rush interactions without reading the environment. This puzzle teaches you how the event handles order-based inputs, soft resets, and visual language, all of which reappear in later islands with higher stakes.
If you understand this one cleanly, the rest of the festival becomes far more readable.
Initial Setup and Required State
Before touching a single lantern, confirm you’re in the correct puzzle state. You must have used the Royal Torch recently, and the island must be entered from the primary drift path, not via glide or drop-in from above.
If the lanterns appear unlit but non-interactive, you’re desynced. Back away, swap tools, wait a few seconds, then re-approach on foot to force the initialization check.
Understanding the Lantern Layout
You’ll see five ghostly lanterns arranged in a loose arc around a central altar. Only three are real inputs; the other two are decoys meant to bait brute-force attempts.
Real lanterns emit a faint audio hum and release drifting purple motes. Decoys remain visually static, even when you stand directly next to them.
The Correct Activation Order
The activation order is not random and does not change with modifiers. You must light the lanterns from lowest elevation to highest elevation, moving clockwise around the altar.
Start with the lantern partially sunk into the stone near ground level. Then activate the mid-height lantern hovering just above waist level. Finish with the high lantern suspended near the broken arch.
If you activate the correct lantern, it will flare briefly and lock into a steady glow. Any other response means the sequence is broken.
Visual and Audio Clues You Should Never Ignore
Each correct activation triggers a soft chime and causes the central altar to pulse once. That pulse is your confirmation flag, not the lantern itself.
If a lantern flickers aggressively or emits a sharp crackle, that’s a failure state warning. You still have time to stop before the full reset triggers if you disengage immediately.
Reset Traps and How Players Accidentally Trigger Them
The biggest trap is activating a decoy lantern at any point. Doing so hard-resets the puzzle, extinguishes all progress, and silently locks interactions for several seconds.
Another common reset comes from gliding after the first activation. Leaving the ground cancels the internal order buffer, even though the lit lantern visually remains on.
If a reset occurs, do not spam interactions. Step away until the lanterns fully dim, then re-initiate from the first lantern only.
Completion Check and Reward Spawn Behavior
Once the final lantern is activated correctly, the altar will release a vertical burst of green flame. This is the true completion signal, not the chest spawn.
The reward chest appears a few seconds later at the island’s anchor edge, not at the altar itself. Players who immediately fast travel or glide away often miss the spawn and assume the puzzle bugged.
Stay grounded, wait for the flame to dissipate, and then move toward the anchor to collect your tokens and event cosmetics.
Puzzle Walkthrough #2 – Whispering Winds Maze: Navigating Fog, Sound Cues, and Time-Based Challenges
After the lantern altar, the Haunted Floating Festival shifts gears into something more mechanical. The Whispering Winds Maze is less about visual logic and more about reading the game’s audio language while managing a hidden timer.
If you try to brute-force this maze by sight alone, you will fail repeatedly. The fog is not decorative, and the maze is actively reacting to your movement state.
How the Maze Actually Works (And Why the Fog Lies)
The maze is built on a looping tile grid that subtly reconfigures when you take incorrect paths. This is not RNG, but it will feel like it if you don’t understand the trigger.
Every wrong turn increases fog density and shifts wall positions behind you. That’s why backtracking often leads somewhere different than where you came from.
The correct route never changes. What changes is your ability to see it if you keep making mistakes.
Understanding the Sound Cue System
Your primary navigation tool here is directional audio, not the minimap. As you approach a correct path, you’ll hear a low, steady wind hum layered with faint chimes.
Wrong paths distort the audio. The wind becomes erratic, and the chimes desync or drop out entirely. That’s your cue to stop immediately.
If the sound cuts to silence, you’ve already triggered a partial reset. Turn around before moving forward again.
Movement Rules That Players Break Without Realizing
Sprinting is a trap in this maze. Moving too quickly causes the game to delay audio feedback, making you overshoot correct turns.
Walk at standard speed and pause briefly at intersections. The sound system updates after about one second, and that delay is intentional.
Gliding is fully disabled here, but dash-like movement from stamina bursts still counts as overcommitting and can scramble the maze state.
The Hidden Timer and How to Control It
Once you enter the maze, an invisible timer starts ticking. You are not racing the clock directly; you’re racing your own error count.
Each incorrect path shaves time off the backend timer. Enough mistakes will force a full fog collapse and reset you to the entrance.
The safest strategy is slow, deliberate movement with frequent stops to confirm audio clarity. Speedruns are punished hard in this puzzle.
Anchor Points and Safe Zones Inside the Maze
Certain stone platforms act as soft checkpoints. When you step onto one, the fog thins slightly and the audio stabilizes.
Use these platforms to recalibrate if the maze starts feeling inconsistent. Standing still on them for a second will also halt the timer drain.
If you miss a platform and push ahead anyway, you risk stacking penalties that no amount of correct movement will undo.
Final Corridor and Exit Conditions
The final stretch is marked by a clear harmonic swell layered over the wind. This is your confirmation that you’re locked onto the correct path.
Do not sprint to the exit. The last corridor has one final false branch that only appears if you move too fast.
When you reach the exit gate, wait for the fog to fully recede before interacting. Early interaction attempts can fail silently and force a reset.
Once cleared, the maze dispels permanently for the event, unlocking the next Haunted Floating Festival challenge and spawning your wind-bound tokens nearby.
Puzzle Walkthrough #3 – Spirit Offerings and Ghostly Interactions: Required Items, Crafting, and NPC Dialog Choices
Once the fog maze collapses for good, the festival pivots from movement mastery to resource management and social precision. This puzzle is where the Haunted Floating Festival quietly checks whether you’ve been paying attention to crafting systems and NPC behavior patterns throughout the event. Nothing here is mechanically difficult, but the failure states are subtle and can waste an entire in-game day if you brute-force it.
Understanding Spirit Offerings and Why Order Matters
Spirit Offerings are not generic quest items. Each one is bound to a specific ghost type, and offering them out of sequence will cause the interaction to soft-lock until the next daily reset.
You’ll see three spectral figures appear around the Floating Isles: the Mourning Child, the Wandering Guardian, and the Restless Host. The game expects you to interact with them in that exact order, even though all three spawn at the same time.
If you start with the wrong spirit, the dialogue will still play, but the offering prompt will be greyed out. That’s your warning sign that you’ve skipped a step.
Required Items and Where Players Get Stuck
Each spirit demands a crafted offering, not a raw item. The Mourning Child requires a Faded Sugar Lantern, the Wandering Guardian asks for a Polished Spirit Charm, and the Restless Host consumes a Shared Remembrance Platter.
The biggest pitfall here is assuming festival vendors sell these outright. They don’t. You must craft all three at a standard crafting station under the Haunted Festival tab.
If that tab isn’t visible, it means you haven’t picked up the Wind-Bound Tokens from the maze exit. Miss those, and this entire puzzle stalls with no clear error message.
Crafting Breakdown and Resource Efficiency
The Faded Sugar Lantern needs Festival Sugarcane, Glimmerwax, and one Coal Ore. Festival Sugarcane only drops at night from the floating planters near the plaza, so time of day matters.
The Polished Spirit Charm is where most players burn extra resources. It requires Refined Moonstone Shards, which should be crafted in batches of three to avoid wasting raw shards due to rounding inefficiencies in the recipe.
The Shared Remembrance Platter pulls from your cooking inventory and requires any two-star meal plus one Echo Herb. Don’t overthink it. The star rating doesn’t affect the outcome, only the presence of the meal itself.
Correct NPC Dialog Choices and Hidden Fail States
When presenting the Faded Sugar Lantern to the Mourning Child, always choose the dialog option focused on listening rather than comforting. Selecting emotional reassurance here feels right, but it flags the interaction as incomplete.
For the Wandering Guardian, pick the option that references duty or protection. Humor-based responses will trigger a dismissive line and force you to re-initiate the conversation, costing time but not resources.
The Restless Host is the strictest check. You must acknowledge shared memory in the dialog tree before offering the platter. Skipping that line causes the offering to be consumed with no progression, which is easily the most punishing mistake in this puzzle.
Visual and Audio Cues That Confirm Success
A successful offering always triggers a brief environmental response. Lanterns dim for the Mourning Child, wind currents stabilize for the Guardian, and distant music swells when the Host accepts the platter.
If you don’t see or hear these cues, the game did not register the interaction correctly, even if the item disappeared from your inventory. Back out immediately and reload the area before continuing.
Once all three spirits are appeased in order, the central festival platform will rise slightly and unlock the next event node. That elevation shift is your final confirmation that Puzzle Walkthrough #3 is fully complete and that you’re still on track to earn every Haunted Floating Festival reward before the event expires.
Common Mistakes and Soft-Locks: What Can Break Puzzle Progress and How to Fix It
Even after clearing the spirit interactions correctly, the Haunted Floating Festival still has several hidden failure points that can quietly stall your progress. Most of these aren’t hard locks, but they feel like one because the game gives almost no feedback when something breaks. Knowing what to watch for is the difference between a clean clear and burning hours before the event timer runs out.
Leaving the Festival Island Mid-Puzzle
The biggest progression killer is fast traveling away from the festival island before the central platform fully rises. If you leave during the elevation animation or immediately after the final spirit interaction, the game may flag the puzzle as incomplete while still consuming your items.
If this happens, reload the game completely and return to the island on foot rather than fast travel. In most cases, the platform will reset to its pre-rise state and allow you to re-trigger the final confirmation without re-crafting offerings.
Inventory Overflow and Silent Item Loss
Dreamlight Valley’s inventory limits are easy to forget during event content, and the Haunted Floating Festival punishes that oversight. If your backpack is full when a spirit attempts to return an item or key fragment, the game simply deletes it instead of dropping it on the ground.
Before engaging any spirit, leave at least three empty inventory slots. If you suspect an item was lost this way, check your mailbox after a full reload, as returned fragments sometimes appear there after a zone reset.
Placing Decorations During Active Puzzle States
This event uses invisible collision zones tied to puzzle triggers, and placing furniture can break them. Dropping decorations near lantern paths, wind currents, or the central platform can prevent the game from registering completion flags.
If progress stalls with no clear reason, enter Furniture Mode and remove anything placed during the event from the festival island. Exit Furniture Mode, reload the area, and re-approach the last completed objective to force the trigger to re-evaluate.
Time-of-Day Desync and Visual Bug States
The Haunted Floating Festival visually adapts to nighttime, but the puzzles themselves are not locked to a specific hour. Problems start when players manually change the time of day mid-puzzle using the graphics settings, which can desync lighting-based triggers.
If lanterns fail to dim or wind effects don’t stabilize despite correct actions, reset the time of day to default and reload the zone. The game recalculates environmental states on load, which usually fixes missing visual confirmations.
Skipping Spirit Order Through Aggressive Interactions
While the game lets you talk to all spirits immediately, the backend progression still expects a specific order. Interacting too aggressively, especially by spamming through dialog or presenting items early, can cause the final platform trigger to never arm.
The fix is simple but unintuitive. Speak to the Mourning Child again, even if they appear finished, then move sequentially through the Guardian and the Host without offering items. This often re-syncs the internal checklist without consuming resources.
Event Timer Expiration During Active Steps
If the event timer rolls over while you’re mid-puzzle, the game may freeze the state rather than fail it outright. This looks like a soft-lock where nothing responds, but no failure message appears.
Unfortunately, the only fix here is a full restart and waiting for the event to re-enter its active window. To avoid this entirely, don’t start Puzzle Walkthrough #3 unless you have at least 20 real-world minutes before the daily reset.
Why Reloading Works More Than Repeating Actions
One final rule of thumb: repeating interactions rarely fixes Haunted Floating Festival issues, but reloading almost always does. The event relies on state checks that only run when the zone loads, not when you spam interactions.
If something feels off, stop. Reload the game, return to the island, confirm environmental cues, and only then continue. It’s the most reliable way to protect your progress and ensure every limited-time reward stays within reach.
All Event Rewards and Completion Checklist: Cosmetics, Furniture, Companions, and Final Festival Finale
With the puzzle logic understood and the common failure points out of the way, this is where the Haunted Floating Festival really pays off. The event is structured so every major puzzle completion feeds directly into a reward tier, and missing even one interaction can lock you out of the finale. Treat this section as both a reward breakdown and a final audit before the event timer expires.
Festival Cosmetics: Outfits, Accessories, and Style Rewards
The Haunted Floating Festival offers one of the strongest cosmetic lineups Dreamlight Valley has seen in a seasonal event. Completing Puzzle Walkthrough #1 unlocks the Wisplight Festival Attire, a layered outfit with animated glow effects that subtly pulse at night. It’s cosmetic-only, but the lighting effect is unique to this event and doesn’t reappear elsewhere.
Puzzle Walkthrough #2 adds the Spiritbound Accessories set, including the Floating Lantern Backpiece and the Whisperveil Mask. These unlock automatically after the Guardian spirit acknowledges your offerings, not when you craft them, so check your wardrobe if they don’t pop immediately. If they’re missing, reload the zone before assuming something broke.
Furniture Rewards: Haunted Decorations and Interactive Pieces
Most of the event’s furniture comes from Puzzle Walkthrough #3 and optional spirit interactions. The Haunted Festival Archway and Ethereal Drum Circle are the headline pieces, both featuring reactive animations tied to time of day. At night, the drum circle emits ambient sound, while the archway projects moving shadows that NPCs will occasionally path through.
Smaller décor items include Floating Candle Clusters, Spirit Banners, and the Lantern-Tethered Fence. These unlock progressively as you complete each spirit’s request, so skipping optional dialog can delay rewards even if the puzzle itself completes. If you’re decorating-heavy, this is the tier you don’t want to rush.
Exclusive Companion: The Festival Wisp
The Festival Wisp companion is the event’s completion gate, and it only unlocks after all three main puzzles and every spirit interaction are fully resolved. It doesn’t drop early and isn’t tied to RNG. If you don’t see it appear after the finale, something in your checklist is incomplete.
Functionally, the Wisp behaves like other companions, but it has unique idle animations and reacts to lantern lighting in the valley. It won’t boost resources, but it’s a clear flex item that signals full event completion to other players.
Final Festival Finale: The Floating Convergence
Once all rewards are primed, returning to the central island triggers the Final Festival Finale. This is a short, non-combat sequence where the floating platforms align, spirits converge, and the skybox temporarily changes. There are no fail conditions here, but skipping the cutscene too aggressively can delay reward flags, so let it play out fully.
At the end, you receive the Festival Completion Memory and the Valley-wide buff that causes lanterns to appear randomly for the remainder of the event. This doesn’t unlock new gameplay, but it’s the game’s confirmation that everything resolved correctly.
Completion Checklist: Don’t Leave Anything on the Table
Before the event ends, confirm the following. All three puzzle walkthroughs completed without soft-locks. Every spirit spoken to in order, including final confirmation dialog. All cosmetics visible in the wardrobe, all furniture placed or available in inventory, and the Festival Wisp selectable as a companion.
If even one item is missing, reload the zone and revisit the Mourning Child first. That NPC is the most reliable trigger for resyncing incomplete reward states without resetting progress.
Final Tip Before the Festival Ends
The Haunted Floating Festival rewards patience more than speed. Reload when something feels wrong, don’t brute-force interactions, and give the game time to register each state change. Dreamlight Valley’s limited-time events are at their best when you play them deliberately, and this one stands out as a rare mix of atmosphere, puzzles, and meaningful rewards.
Finish it cleanly, claim everything, and let the lanterns float a little longer before they’re gone.