Six L.A. Pumpkin Patches, Priced for the Same Family of Four: $8 to $136.

One criterion sets the order: what two adults and two children pay at the gate on a mid-October Saturday.

Two pumpkin patches will be running inside Culver City this October. One of them charges a family of four $8 to walk in and hands back $4 of it in pumpkin credit. The other will charge the same four people $100 to walk in on Saturday, October 17, and that buys the gate and nothing through it — the bounce house is a dollar a ticket.

We read the posted admission, ticket and fee pages of six Los Angeles-area pumpkin patches on September 24, 2026, and priced every one of them for the same party: two adults and two children, ages four and eight, walking up on a mid-October Saturday. Where a patch prices by the day, the day is October 17. Where it posts one flat fee, the flat fee is the number. Parking counts where it is charged. Pumpkins don't, because nobody's pumpkin is the same size.

The order below is that single figure, and the spread is $128. What the figure does not capture is the argument, which is that these six businesses are selling two completely different products under one word. Three of them charge you for a gate and then sell the afternoon behind it a ride at a time. Two of them put most of the afternoon inside the admission. One of them posts no price at all.

1. Shawn’s Pumpkin Patch, Culver City — $8, and half of it comes back

Shawn’s posts the shortest price line in this county and puts it at the top of every page on its site: “Entrance Fee: $4 – Applies to adults & children 12 and over. (Includes a $2 voucher toward the purchase of pumpkins!)” Our eight-year-old and our four-year-old are therefore free, the two adults pay $4 each, and $4 of the $8 walks back out as credit on a pumpkin. Nothing else on this page is close.

The patch has moved for 2026. Its site announces a new address — 6229 Bristol Parkway, in the Fox Hills end of Culver City — and an opening date of October 3, a week behind the earliest patch on this page.

Then the token economy starts. The attractions page prices the giant slides at $5, the pumpkin bounce house at $5, the Playland toy yard at $5, the train ride at $5, the carnival games at $5, the petting zoo at $5 with feed a dollar a cup, face painting at “$5.00 & up,” the pony ride at $10 on Thursdays through Sundays with an 80-pound weight limit, and the bungee trampoline at $15. Two children doing three things apiece is $30, which is nearly four times the gate. The $4 door is real. It’s also the cheapest part of the visit.

2. Pa’s Pumpkin Patch, Lakewood — $16, and it costs that on a Tuesday too

Pa’s sets up in the Lakewood Center parking lot, directly in front of the JCPenney, and its own Know Before You Go notes put entry at “$5 for adults and $3 for children under 13 years old. Ages 3 and under come in for free!” That is $16 for our four. The same page adds the sentence that matters more than the number: “This pricing will be the same for weekdays and weekends.”

Of the patches here that post a price at all, only two charge a Saturday visitor what they charge a weekday visitor, and Pa’s is the one that says so in writing. It has also dropped the reservation system it once ran — “Reservations are not required!” — while keeping an occupancy limit, and it is the only patch here that will let you bring the dog, provided the dog is leashed and well behaved. Cal Poly Pomona and Forneris Farms both ban pets outright, and Forneris cites the county health department and the USDA when it does.

The ride and game tickets carry an unusual term, and it is in the family’s favor: tickets bought at Pa’s “can be used all throughout the month,” so an unspent strip is not a loss. The gate doesn’t work the same way — “Entrance fees will still apply if you come back to Pa’s another day” — and parking is the mall’s, which is to say free.

What the strip costs is on the attractions page: “Each ticket $2.50 ea / 10 tickets for $20 / 30 tickets for $50 / 100 tickets for $150.” Rides run two to four tickets — the merry-go-round two, the Toon Cars and the Dragon Race three each, the Race Track and the Leap of Faith four — alongside live music and seven carnival games. Every ride also posts a height rule, and one of them is a rare piece of generosity: a child between 30 and 41 inches may ride the merry-go-round with an adult, and the adult costs nothing.

3. Cal Poly Pomona PumpkinFest — $82.17, and it is the best buy on this page

Here is the placement worth arguing about, so let me state it plainly: I would pay Cal Poly $82.17 before I paid $16 in a mall parking lot, and the reason is the list of what the ticket already covers. The university’s festival page puts the corn mazes, the sunflower maze, the cow train, the petting farm, the hay wagon ride, the Jr. Farmers Discovery Zone, live music and the farm demonstrations inside general admission, and notes only that it “Does not include pumpkins or Petting Farm feed.” At the two cheap patches above, the hayride is not a category that exists.

The $82.17 is built from the university’s own checkout page. Its Family 4 Pack Bundle is online only, sells in multiples of four, and lists at $15 a ticket — “Save $3 per ticket by buying a family pass” — with $4 a ticket in fees on top, for $76. Parking is $5 on Saturdays and Sundays, plus $1.17 in fees, bought with the tickets. Children under two get in free; ours don’t qualify.

Now the part the checkout page does not advertise. A single weekend adult ticket is $18, and the same checkout adds $1.99, then 3.4 percent, then $1.50 — $4.10 in all, for $22.10. The ticket’s own label reads “Weekend General Admission | Gate Price $22.” Buying ahead at Cal Poly Pomona costs a dime more than turning up. The family pack is the only discount here that survives its own fees.

PumpkinFest runs Saturdays and Sundays from October 10 to 31, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., with gate sales closing at 6. One more line to read before you plan around the Farm Store: on festival weekends the store is open to the general public only from 7 to 10 a.m., and after that “paid PumpkinFest admission and a wristband are required to shop.”

4. Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch, Culver City — $100, for the gate only

Mr. Bones prices its season day by day — a fifteen-row table covering twenty-nine open days — which is more pricing information than anyone else on this page offers and, read straight down, a fairly brutal document. Opening day, Friday October 2, is $10. Most weekdays are $12. October 17 and 18 are $20 before 11 a.m. and $25 after. Admission is required from age three, so our four pay $100 to arrive at noon on the 17th — two and a half times what the same four would pay on the 2nd, at the same patch, for the same pumpkins.

And the admissions page is explicit about what that buys: “Admission prices include entry to the patch only.” Activities are $1 a ticket, with 10 for $9, 20 for $17 and 40 for $33, or a $30 Ultimate Kids Pass that covers the bounce houses, the straw maze, the super slide and the petting zoo and pointedly doesn’t cover face painting, pumpkin decorating or pony rides, and buys no front-of-line privileges. Two of those passes on top of the $100 is $160 before anyone has touched a pumpkin.

Some of it comes back, and the terms are worth knowing because they are not interchangeable. On weekends each paid adult gets $5 in Pumpkin Bucks and each paid child gets five activity tickets; on weekdays everyone gets the $5 in Pumpkin Bucks. Pumpkin Bucks buy a Mr. Bones pumpkin and nothing else, can’t be swapped for activity tickets, and keep until closing day. Call our October 17 bill $80 net, then. The season runs October 2 to 31, closed on the 6th.

5. Underwood Family Farms, Moorpark — $136, and the only one that swears off fees

The region’s biggest fall farm is not in Los Angeles County at all — it is off Sunset Valley Road in Moorpark, in Ventura County — and it is on this page because half of the San Fernando Valley drives there and because its price is the outer bound of the argument. October 17 and 18 is Wild West Weekend, and the festival page prices it at “$34 – Admission” online, with “$38 – Day Of Admission If Spots Available.” Weekend tickets are online only. Four at $34 is $136; walk up and, if there is room, it is $152.

Underwood is also the only operator here that prints a promise about checkout, and it prints it under every single weekend: “no additional on-line fees added at checkout.” The most expensive gate on this page is the one that does not charge you to pass through it online. Parking is free, children under two are free, and seniors, military, veterans and first responders take $2 off daily with ID.

What the $34 covers is the case for it: the corn maze, tractor-drawn wagon rides, Farmer Craig’s Chicken Show, the pumpkin house, the corn stalk labyrinth, hay pyramids, the animal center, the slides, fifty acres. What it doesn’t is a long list too — gem and fossil mining, the electric train and the John Deere, bee, cow and grain trains, horse-drawn wagon rides, the petting and duck-feeding areas, games and crafts, face painting, the giant bubble. And the cheat code is printed right above the weekend table: Monday through Friday it is $16 at the gate, which puts the same four people through the same corn maze for $64.

The festival runs September 26 through October 31. The farm’s own page calls that last date a Friday in one line and a Saturday in another. It is a Saturday.

6. Forneris Farms, Mission Hills — unranked, because it won’t say

Forneris says its family has been farming in Los Angeles County for over 100 years, and it stamps “Growing greatness since 1966” across the top of its site. It tells an October visitor almost everything except the one thing this page is about. Across its pumpkin patch page and its Know Before You Go page it posts October hours of 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, free parking, no reservations, a cash-only rule it repeats on both pages, and a no-pets rule it attributes to the Los Angeles County health department and the USDA. It posts no admission price anywhere.

The closest it comes is a sentence that confirms a fee exists without naming it: “You may enjoy the Farm Market for produce, mini pumpkins, decorative squash and fall décor without paying an entry fee.” A ranking built on posted prices cannot rank a patch that posts none, so this one sits outside the order rather than at the bottom of it.

Two more things the 2026 pages say. The fields are closed — “We do not offer any self-harvesting experiences” — so the pumpkins are picked and arranged rather than pulled off a vine. And the maze is gone: “NO Corn Maze in 2026. We will have pumpkins.” Bring cash.

What the six prices are actually telling you

Sort these six by the gate and you get $8, $16, $82.17, $100, $136 and a shrug. Sort them by what an afternoon costs and the order buckles. Four tokens apiece for two children at Shawn’s is $40 on top of the $8, and the family is at $48 without a hayride, a maze or a train. Two children on four rides apiece at Pa’s is about 24 tickets, which is the 30-ticket strip at $50, and the family is at $66. Cal Poly’s $82.17 has the hayride, the cow train, two mazes and the petting farm already inside it, and I don’t think that’s a close call.

The fee lines run the other way from what you would expect. The cheapest patches charge no booking fee because they take cash at a folding table. The most expensive one, Underwood, prints a guarantee that it adds nothing at checkout. The public university in the middle adds $4.10 to an $18 ticket and lands ten cents above the gate price it advertises on the same line — and then offers a family pack that is genuinely cheaper, fees and all, than four singles bought either way.

October 17 is the expensive Saturday nearly everywhere on this page: Mr. Bones at its $25 peak, Underwood in Wild West Weekend, Cal Poly’s Insect Festival weekend. October 12 through 15 is $12 a head at Mr. Bones and $16 a head at Underwood’s gate — $48 and $64 for the same four people, and $124 less across the two farms than the Saturday. Take the Tuesday. The pumpkins are the same age.