City Lights

Bad service, I called in earlier and the guy was very rude on the phone. What a disappointment! Everything in the store is way over priced.

I am a small business owner and like to shop at other small businesses. This year we needed a new Christmas tree stand, so I purchased a new heavy duty metal stand from City Lights in early Dec, of this year. When I took down my tree, I was horrified to see my new metal stand from
City Lights had a small uneven hole on the solder line on bottom that leaked. It Went through the heavy plastic to my carpet. Wet and Rust stains everywhere. So I called City Lights. Spoke to Susan. Explained to her, the stand was defective and I didn’t know as the tree was covering the area/​wetness. The solder was not secure. She said to bring it in and they’d exchange or give store credit. That night when I got to the store, I was aggressively and rudely told by the store owner (had to be with his nasty attitude) that I had it all season and he would not do anything for me. He snickered said something nasty again and walked away. All season? The stand has a obvious hole in the side from manufacturing and they won’t do anything for me. I’ve come here for years. As my family has. The way I was spoken to, was disgusting and as a business owner, I was horrified. I’ve never been spoken to that way in a customer service situation. This man doesn’t stand behind anything he sells and I honestly feel robbed. I will never go there again and can’t wait to drive to Escondido to give their competitors my money for a new stand. This place gives small business a bad name.

Amazing customer service, plenty of parking and great prices! This place is absolutely wonderful and a must visit.

If you want great lighting selections and pretty much anything christmas this is the place to go. The owner and staff were very knowledgeable and friendly. We bought some old school C7 lights for the tree and everything looks and works great. Worth the trip to get your holiday spirit started.

Let me start by saying its a beautiful place but I got to see and hear the owner first hand be rude as ever to an employee. I was surprised to see her not get up and leave. It was disrespectful and not called for. I will not be returning I was in the process of buying items which I left behind due to this act of rudeness. My husband and I felt bad for the girl. I would not consider referring anyone for employment here after that. I’m not sorry for the bad review maybe it’s time to hang it up. If you’re not able to speak to employees with respect no matter what the situation. Very disappointed

I won a $ 500 Small Claims Suit against Barcana Christmas Trees for not honoring their warranty. Peter Barthlemess refuses to pay the judgement. This says a lot about the character of the company. Do NOT buy a Barcana Christmas Tree!

11÷9÷2015
This is A Christmas Decoration Superstore.
The place is Giant in size with every kind of decorations that you can dream of. From fake trees to bulbs, Christmas stockings. Christmas lighting and more. This is a one stop shop.
It’s a bit overly pricy but they have nice stuff.
The staff is friendly and helpful but they do have a no refund policy. Read The Signs.
If you come here plan on spending some extra time sightseeing as there is a lot of cool stuff to see.
Not a great place for kids as if they break anything you will be charged. Not overly kid friendly.
Enjoy

Came here for the first time yesterday, and my mind was blown at how many beautiful, high-​quality Christmas decorations City Lights had in their store. Pretty much everything imaginable. If you moved to San Diego and had zero Christmas decorations and ornaments, this place would be your one-​stop shop. From ornaments to lights, tree skirts to stockings, nativity scenes to miniature towns, and artificial trees to a selection of wreaths — they’ve got it all!
One of my favorite ornament designers, Christopher Radko, makes beautiful and unique ornaments. City Lights has an entire wall dedicated to his ornaments.
This store is huge, I spent an hour, easily, in here. I can’t wait to go back and do some ornament shopping for friends!
Fun Halloween decorations on sale too!

BUYER BEWARE! City Lights should make the effort to know whether the products it sells come from honest vendors or not but it apparently is not overly concerned with what happens once you have handed over your cash.
Although our tree purchased here comes with a 25 year warranty, the manufacturer has refused to honor this warranty, calling the drooping tree «normal wear and tear.»
I’m not sure how the top section falling over at a ninety degree angle constitutes normal wear and tear, but I am sure that the warranty that would seem to justify the exceedingly high price for this tree is worthless — as is the tree itself.
This is the third excuse from the manufacturer not to repair/​replace the tree — after refusing to respond to our emails at all until we cc’d this store. The first being we needed to produce our original purchase receipt even though we sent photos of the original packaging with our warranty request (added one extra star for a total of two for Kathy’s effort to locate our receipt — of course they don’t keep them for anywhere close to 25 years either) in order to receive a return authorization number. After arguing through this issue, the excuse morphed into the wear and tear baloney, confirming my hunch that Barcana never intended to honor its warranty.

Unbelievably poor customer service!!! If I could give zero stars that would be better… I purchased $ 50 little Xmas trees for my village and they didn’t work. Extremely poor quality and $ 50!!! I expect items to work when I pay almost $ 100 for a little toy tree that is only 7″ tall. So when I drove over 30 miles to return it they say we don’t do any refunds… which would make sense if I didn’t like it or changed my mind but they sold me a defective item… their fault not mine. My Xmas village had no tree… funny I could have gone to Target spent half as much and if it didn’t work I would have received my money back. Now I have store credit for a store I don’t care to step foot in ever again. City Lights… please join the rest of us in the 21^st century where customer service is EVERYTHING!!! I used to look forward to my annual trek to the Xmas store and I have always dropped a decent amount of $$$ …but no more

i decided to get a fake tree this year. my husband saw an ad for this place so we decided to check it out. Great store-​fully stocked with a wide variety of items.
we decided on a tree that was too large for us to transport. Brian graciously agreed to have our tree delivered to our residence. awesome! get to the cashier, give her our names, address, telephone number etc. we went home, cleared the area the tree was going to be set up and amp up the kids letting them know tree decorating night was a few nights away. a few hours later i get a call from my family in LA saying someone called them about a xmas tree. um, what? the cashier didnt save our information so they went on an internet white pages hunt to track us down. anyway, the night it was promised, i called to get an estimate on when it’d arrive. i was placed on hold by Kathy for at least 20 minutes. Finallyyy she comes back and puts Brian on the line. There was a problem with the tree so i had 2 options– get a full refund or get the deluxe version of the same tree at no additional cost. OK, fine. We’ll get the deluxe version. It comes in a few days later without a stand! they deliver one a few days later. We set it up and turn on the lights and bam, they go out a few minutes later. Great, now what? Going to call them tomorrow to see…
im tired of dealing with them. about a week away from xmas and my 2 kids dont have a tree. How great do i feel? Especially for my youngest’s first xmas? no picture memories just this sad ordeal to relay to her when shes older. super super sad!

The name is a little misleading. You’d assume it would be a light store, but it really isn’t.
My wife and I have been slowly getting trees bigger than the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree we had while dating. The big problem we have had over the last few years is finding good quality lights and glass Christmas tree ornaments. The lights we already found (Home Depot), but the glass ornaments were the unexpected challenge.
I figured San Diego has to have at least one store that specialized in Christmas and I starting looking on Unilocal.This place was exactly what I was looking for. They had a big variety of glass ornaments. Some of the ornament boxes had white stickers taped over the «Made in China» stickers… I really wished they didn’t do that… Is that even legal?
…but made in China or not the ornaments are hand blown and painted.

Drove down after searching their website to no avail, got to the store and found something similar to what I was looking for. Store policy is no refunds, credit or exchange only which is why I didn’t buy the item I came in for. At $ 135.00 if it doesn’t work or I don’t like it I don’t want to be stuck.
I was there easily for 90minutes, sensory overload, a lot of very pretty items. Not my deal to spend BIG bucks on decorations aside from the occasional sentimental item.
Clerks were very helpful and friendly, this was a Sunday so the store was very busy.
I suggest leaving your small kids (strollers) at home, there’s just no room.
Lastly, a policy I really don’t appreciate is «you break, you buy». Accidents happen…

While this place is loaded with holiday decorations, you can only get store credit for defective merchandise. I have had to make four trips to return defectives lights. It isn’t worth the trouble. There are too many places to shop to have your money stuck with this place.
We were replacing all lights this year for LED lights. They are not cheap. We ended up ordering on line and having them shipped rather than spending any more than the $ 100 we spent here.
We will see if our fourth replacement strand is any better than the three before this one.
I should add that the staff are helpful and friendly and cannot help the policies of their company.

If you are a fan of Christmas, this place is for you. I’m not big on the holiday myself (grinch alert) but Christmas holds a special place for Mario G. so I surprised him with a trip here. You could spend a good two hours here looking over all of the decorations, trees, lights, and ornaments. After about 30 minutes I had my personal fill, but I forged on. They have ornaments ranging from a few bucks to over $ 100. Ever want to get into model rail road décor? This place should be on your list.
Pro tips: Free personalization offered here. Parking is at a premium. DO NOT BRING SMALL CHILDREN HERE. For all of you fellow grinches, coronado brewing is right next door.

Leave your check book at home. This place will have you wanting to buy everything in the store. The decorations are awesome. My wife was very inspired by everything they had. They have every decoration you could think of for Christmas. Staff if very friendly and it’s quite packed inside. Only thing I could gripe about is the parking doesn’t meet the demand for everyone that was there. We will be back soon!

Love the christmas products! Expensive store. Workers showed and went far beyond to help which made me glad to shop here.

Oh my grosh this place is freaking awesome!
My wife and I love Christmas and when we discovered this holiday store not too far away from SeaWorld we knew we had to stop in for a visit.
This place is BIG and has many different rooms filled w/​Christmas merchandise. There is an enormous selection of bulbs and various handcrafted ornaments as well as an abundant selection of Christmas village sets including many from Department 56. There is also Jim Shore collections, statues, lights, nutcrackers, Christmas trees, really the whole shebang. When we visited in September the store was comprised of about 95% Christmas merchandise; the rest was a few TY beanie babies and stuffed animals, some Lennox, Precious Moments, WDCC, and non Christmas Jim Shore pieces and a small room of Halloween novelties. There was also a display case of various bug and animal figurines made to resemble fruits and vegetables.
This place is big so be prepared to spend a while here if you plan on seeing everything they have to offer. Yes, they do have restrooms. This place is kinda warehousey and there is no AC and it can get rather hot inside. Staff was abundant all over this place and constantly asked if we needed assistance. They have signs informing parents to watch over their children and enforce a «you break it, you buy it» policy. We had our young niece w/​us when we visited and had no problems; in fact several of the staff members complimented on how well behaved she was. They also have a strict return policy, so before you make your purchase and leave make sure everything is working and accounted for. They also have artist signings from time to time (Jim Shore was one of the upcoming ones) which is really neat.
If you love Christmas I highly recommend you make a visit here. As far as quantity, this place has Stats in Pasadena beat.

This place will overwhelm you with the Christmas spirit. It has everything: trees, ornaments, figurines, wreaths, lights, villages and so much more. There is a style for every person from safari to beach theme. My only complaint was they had no air condition. It’s a little pricey, but there are things here you wouldn’t find anywhere else. Every inch is covered in Christmas and the staff is super friendly and helpful! This is the place to come for unique christmas gifts and decorations.

While I prefer Canterbury Gardens in Escondido I am not willing to make the trek these days. So City Lights, a crazy cousin of sorts to Canterbury does the trick. City Lights is like the relative that allows you to sit on the couch without all the plastic. Canterbury is indeed a little fancier but most of the time City Lights will fit the bill. Located off of Morena Blvd, 365 days a year with a parking lot that is not suited for people who coordinate their outfits for the occasion. Or for people that shouldn’t be driving a car and almost mow down two people in front of you while you wait for a parking spot. All before getting the store.
The place is a people watching paradise. You got the people that take Christmas ornament shopping way too seriously, the eclectic mix of staff, the unintentionally creepy Santa that sounds like the chester from Family Guy. Someone asked Santa what kind of cookie he wanted left out. He said ‘White chocolate chip and pomegranate’ .Hmm.pretty sure Santa is stepping out on Mrs Claus. and maybe for the other team
So yeah ornaments. Here ornaments are going to be a little higher than stores, but they usually have a theme. They had a «Under the Sea’ theme ‘White Christmas’ theme etc. They have ornaments for people that like booze, kids cartoon characters, music lovers, motorcycle lovers. you name it they probably have it.
The Christmas trees (fake, a mockery of Christmas) are very expensive here. I would save getting stuff like that and wreaths, lights whatever to a Target or Walmart
They also have cool displays of towns, trains etc. in the back
You will spend money here. There is no way you can’t. So be prepared. and maybe come during the week. It’s crazy during the weekend around this time