I visited Christmas Town yesterday and had a fantastic time. It feels like the event has gotten some of its mojo back. I daresay it, but I think CT may have taken the crown back from Winterfest as the better theme park holiday event this year.
Christmas Town 2023 remains a far cry from the event in its heyday (which, frankly, was only a handful of years ago). But taken on their own terms – not comparing them to their all-time best – the decorations all looked solid and complete, and the park felt festive. At the very least, Christmas Town no longer feels like an event reeling from a post-COVID stripdown; CT 2021 and 2022 very much had the vibe of "Here's the bare minimum, and you'll accept it because it's Christmas Town and we know you'll pay for it anyway!"
Pretty much the whole park looks nice, which hasn't been the case for the past few years. Polar Pathway, which had been in shambles for the past few seasons, is stunning with its new appearance (at least when the show isn't running; more on that in a second). Aquitaine, which had basically looked forgotten for the past few years, at least has a cohesive aesthetic and has a nice French-language Christmas music soundtrack; nowhere near as creative or grand as the "12 Days of Christmas" overlay it once had, but a million times better than the sparse rainbow lights and recycled DarKastle Santa meet-and-greet soundtrack that the park had put there recently. I love the continuing improvements to Rhinefeld's delicate candy cane aesthetic. And though I agree that there are fewer miniature live Christmas trees dotting the park and fewer lights strung up than there once were, no area of the park felt "dark."
And, in a heartwarmingly welcome return to form for the event, I spotted a handful of path entertainment yesterday. Not only is there the advertised addition of the Celtic dancers in Killarney (a great touch!) and the Dickensian carolers in Banbury, but a few dressed up characters like the Gingerbread Man were roaming the park, and I saw a handful of Dickensian-style atmospheric actors interacting with guests in Banbury too. This is the sort of stuff that makes the event – and the park – feel alive, and it makes me happy knowing there's an emphasis on them again.
I'll also add my obligatory annual praise for Scrooge No More and 'Twas That Night, which have basically become holiday traditions for me and my family. They're among the best shows BGW has ever produced and the best entertainment I've ever seen in a theme park, and unless BGW can put together a worthy replacement for them (spoiler: doubtful), I hope they stick around for years to come. This was my first time seeing Twas without Elvis Stojko as the lead, and while his replacement doesn't have quite the charisma that made Elvis's performance so magnetic (you could really tell Elvis had a blast putting his all into the character), the new lead's skating talent is nearly as impressive. I left happy that the show is still great even without its superstar lead.
That said, there are a few areas for improvement I noticed:
Polar Pathway - I absolutely love the new lights for this area – when the show isn't going. It looks even more ethereal and otherworldly than ever, and coupled with the hauntingly beautiful soundtrack that it's always had, it's one of the most enchanting displays, or really experiences, I've seen. That said, I agree with everyone else that the lights show is crap. Overplayed holiday pop songs with the simplest, cheapest "animations" that make the whole building look like a mid-2000s PC screensaver. Yawn. Most groups seemed to only watch for 30 seconds before moving on. I'd prefer that they just left Polar Pathway as it always is, a serene experience to savor. But if they insist on getting their money's worth from these fancy new lights, they need to at least put together a show that's A) tonally and thematically consistent with Polar Pathway's grand and almost eerie beauty, and B) creative enough to hold the audience's attention with a compelling story and animation.
Gloria - I'm glad there's an actual Christmas show in the Abbey Stone again, and I have a feeling that this stripped-down version of Gloria is probably still better than anything new the park could have produced these days. I'm also glad they took the opportunity to update the cringe-inducing slideshow of low-resolution stock images from the middle of the show with a more polished series of videos. But the lack of a large orchestra has a bigger impact on the show than I expected. The show feels cheaper, hammier with its mostly canned music – it feels less like what I always thought was a fairly impressive production for a theme park, and more like a Kings Dominion-type music revue. I know musicians are expensive, but if BGW doesn't want to cough up the money for a proper new show, I think they at least need a few more musicians (brass, wind, strings) to beef up the orchestra and make the show more worth watching.
O Tannenbaum - I think the folks at BGW need to take a trip to KD to see how an impressive modern Christmas display should look. I'm glad they were aware that the old O Tannenbaum was out of date, but the updated version feels a little cold, and like Polar Pathway, feels like they just selected the "demo" program after they took the new lights out of the box.
Holiday Hills - It's a little sad that this area is basically just Festa Italia with some vaguely 1950s decor sprinkled in; if any area of the park feels like an afterthought now, it's this one. At its peak, Holiday Hills was the Christmas equivalent of a perfect Terror-tory, totally immersive with multiple sound channels, full-size 50s billboards, huge displays, and more. If BGW doesn't want to completely cede this vibe of flashy, immersive, colorful holiday fun to KD, I wish they wouldn't leave Festa so neglected.
Food and Beverage - No surprise that this is still an issue, but why is SEAS so insistent on making it so damn hard to spend money on food and drink here? There were only a few places open serving hot chocolate, making the lines massive. And the fact that they've essentially given up on holiday meals is sad, especially when KD continues to do an outstanding job there. Note to Scott Ross: I'll spend more money if you give me food worth spending it on!
Aquitaine - As I said earlier, I'm glad this area isn't basically nothing but a few rainbow lights carelessly and sparsely hung up anymore. But the red floodlights and fiberglass figurines, while at least providing a consistent aesthetic, still feel a little creatively bankrupt. The French music they were playing makes me wonder why they don't just got for a "Parisian Christmas" vibe. It seems like that direction could be fairly inexpensively executed, feel more immersive, and could probably provide some nice photo ops and money-spending opportunities.
As a final aside, I like that they've left Land of the Dragons open as a playground even though they're not decorating it or running the rides anymore. It was nice for the few years when they did decorate it it (especially for the views from the skyride coming into Rhinefeld from Aquitaine), but if I were working with a budget-crazy chairman of the board and had to cut decorations from somewhere, LOTD would probably be my first choice. But I noticed lots of families taking advantage of the playground, so I wanted to point this decision out as a smart decision by the park.
All in all, it's hard not to evaluate CT while remembering how over-the-top incredible many areas used to be, but I think that if I had never seen CT circa ~2015, I would have walked away thinking BGW had put on a solid, magical Christmas event this year.
