Busch Gardens Williamsburg Christmas Town 2024

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Nicole said:
I guess I wasn’t clear. I specifically said that I didn’t think you meant that year-round lights and projection mapping were all that are needed. My post was focused on all of the other things that the park no longer seems interested in doing, especially those unrelated to physical set-up. My basic point is that I don’t think their being able to save time would actually solve the underlying problem.
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Appreciate the clarification. I guess I feel differently. If some of these time consuming things were no longer time consuming and labor eaters then I feel like they would get to some of those other things.

I feel like my best way to put it is I feel as though some of those things have fallen by the way side because the budget and labor hours get eaten with installing lights. And when you add in that there has been excessive cuts to budget, using it for tasks that could be good year round effects anyways hurt the overall product. If time/budget didn’t have to go to taking out the lights, checking them, replacing them, putting them up with what little time the park is not occupied - that money and time can go to more effective seasonal decorations.
 
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Zachary said:
Lighting last night definitely felt more sparse to me vs even just last season. And while the lighting reductions hurt, honestly, what I hate way more is that it feels like the sophistication of the decorations—lights and otherwise—keeps falling at a very notable clip. Things like wreaths and garland are few and far between. Christmas trees along pathways (in the Wild Reserve for instance) are massively reduced. Hell, they haven't even put the temporary walls up on the shops in San Marco.

There's just a lot of park dressing—even outside of lights—that isn't up right now—and now that previews are over, even if they show up in the weeks ahead, that's unacceptable.

I'll also note this: What the hell happened to merch this year? Feels like the entire park is full of the same, generic amusement park Christmas merch no matter what store you walk into. Unique and desirable merch seemed non-existent to me last night with many stores still stocked almost entirely with their main season selections. Plus, there are only a couple 3rd party merchants setup and two of them are basically year-round tenets at this point so they hardly even count. Even just that downgrade really sucked some life out of the event for me.

Year over year I'm sure people won't feel much of a change because the degradation of Christmas Town has been a slow and steady slide, but damn, it really did feel quite evident to me last night.
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That’s exactly it. The degradation of the ENTIRE park has been bit by bit so it isn’t major from year to year. But over the years this park has went from being the gold standard of theme parks to what it is now. It’s definitely overpriced for the quality of experience.
 
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warfelg said:
Appreciate the clarification. I guess I feel differently. If some of these time consuming things were no longer time consuming and labor eaters then I feel like they would get to some of those other things.

I feel like my best way to put it is I feel as though some of those things have fallen by the way side because the budget and labor hours get eaten with installing lights. And when you add in that there has been excessive cuts to budget, using it for tasks that could be good year round effects anyways hurt the overall product. If time/budget didn’t have to go to taking out the lights, checking them, replacing them, putting them up with what little time the park is not occupied - that money and time can go to more effective seasonal decorations.
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That doesn’t account for the lack of merch and food. Once again, I was focusing on things unrelated to the time issue. Decor is important, but other components are equally key to a themed event.
 
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Sucks even with a season pass I don't feel the urge to go to CT. If it wasn't for my wife id literally only go to ride Alpengeist
 
warfelg said:
I will once again grab my soapbox to say:

This is why year round operations are terrible. Even the 2-3 weeks off between HOS and CT would help immensely with some of this even if the same issues on budget existed. I think having guests go through a park while you are trying to set up one event while taking down another is a mistake. I believe that some of this issue with not fully decorating is that fact that they stay open all the time and upper management can hit the "just good enough" button on these decorations mostly because they ran out of time. Then with having to make sure all the rides are good and then you need people to work the nights in all departments, especially ones that would help set up, it strains the labor hours to decide whats more important for coverage.

I will also say if they do want to continue down the road of year round no breaks, then they need to invest in extremely good lighting packages, professional LED color changing lights, high quality projection mapping, and quick change decoration setups; and do up the entire park with this stuff. Then it can all be pre programed that on a certain date you hit a program to flip all the coloring. Maintain a small amount of lighting that does need to be manually put up to make sure each event feels fresh.
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I dont think that this can be blamed on year round operations. It’s mostly because they don’t want to invest the money in the labor to do it.

Dollywood only took off four days of their daily schedule between their Halloween and Christmas event.

Even Carowinds did not close for a weekend between their Halloween and Christmas event and their lights are 10 times better than BGW in my opinion. I believe they pay subcontractors to do the lights. It’s all about making the proper investment into the event.

BGW would be better off, however, using the existing trees and shrubs around the parks for the lights instead of bringing in all the live Christmas trees that turn brown too soon.

The Winterfest parks have the advantage that they can string their lights during October and not turn them on. BGW cannot bring in the live trees in October or they would be brown at the start of the event.

IMO the Wiinterest type lighting on the existing trees is much better anyhow. It’s more immersive
 
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I would love to see the park take the Dollywood approach to setting up lights and stick more of them all over the buildings.

Stick lights in the trees in the transition areas like the pathway between Pompeii and Italy.

Hersheypark has their NOEL display along Spring Creek, so have a similar light setup along the Rhine. They stick smaller trees down there anyway. Might as well string up some of the larger ones and create a great photo op with the Peace on Earth sign.

I do get why the lights are set up the way they are. The event feels a bit classier than Winterfest, Candylane or Holiday in the Park. While its not as immersive in lights as Carowinds, the event is trying to be a bit more traditional Christmas over just covering the entire park in tons of lights.

I'd love to have a compromise between the immersive light displays at Carowinds and the more traditional approach like Dollywood and Disney. The villages do get more lights, but they're set up like Dollywood where each building is covered in lights but done in a classy way. Maybe have lights outlining each building. Pompeii Pathway, the Oktoberfest/Rhinefeld transition area, and Italy Bridge have the bigger, more immersive displays. I thought about adding more lights to Wild Reserve, but I like the way its set up. Maybe have bigger lights around the train tracks, but keep the quiet atmosphere on the hillside and into the exhibits.
 
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Trim back the brush a little and ax the cigarette and pot smoke and this would be a great view.
 

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I haven't posted in a while but figured this was worth writing about. We have some friends living in Florida now. Their son was up here for the archeological seminar last week and had his wife and daughter with him. Of course, they went to CT on the first preview night while they were here. They raved about how good it was and said they had a great time. I guess since they didn't have anything to compare it to they enjoyed it and I'm sure they spent a fair amount of money on food and drinks. That is what BG is after! Not you and me. They want the one-time visitor who has nothing to compare it to and will go, enjoy themselves and spend money. Mind you, I warned my friend to tell his son that it was expensive and the food was awful. Didn't seem to matter.

I pulled out my video from the 2011 CT visit. It runs about 30 minutes and has the whole Gloria show. Even looking at the rest of the video I didn't feel like I was watching BGW Christmas Town. It is so much different now.

We no longer get anything to eat and might get a single Icee (when they are working) and that is all. BGW doesn't make anything off of our visits anymore. We have discussed it and by this time next year we will no longer be going anyway. In May when they celebrate their 50th year we will be celebrating our 50th year of going to the park. By June 1 we will be canceling our passes.
 
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Is Verbolten actually running? There was a report it wasn't, and it doesn't appear on queue-times.
 
bill s said:
Is Verbolten actually running? There was a report it wasn't, and it doesn't appear on queue-times.
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My friend is at the park. She just got to Oktoberfest and Verbolten is open. She sent this pic of the current wait time...
 

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Alpengeist is listed as temporarily closed. It's either Griffon was closed just for the pin trading event in the Griffon plaza, or the website editors messed up and forgot to list it as closed for the season because it's definitely not on the Christmas Town map.
 
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