Winterfest
- Thread starter jornor
- Start date
I merged the thread created by @InsertCleverNameHere asking whether TT will be open during Winterfest with this thread. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the exact title, which @belsaas commented on in response.
Edit: The thread was entitled, “Is Twisted Timbers actually gonna be open on Winterfest?”
Thank you, @Gavin!
Edit: The thread was entitled, “Is Twisted Timbers actually gonna be open on Winterfest?”
Thank you, @Gavin!
Last edited:
To answer your question, Twisted Timbers won't be open. The complete list of the rides open during Winterfest is here under the "Rides" tab.
The Ice Rink is going to be huge!
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I wonder how well they will be able to maintain it. Both CW and BGW have had issues during warmer winters keeping their considerable smaller rinks frozen.
It is for one of the Christmas Town shows. They convert the Royal Palace Theater stage into an ice skating rink for the show. That’s one of the reasons they no longer have penguins, and the area the penguins took up was the backstage area for the show.
I was not able to get a picture, but there are giant tacky multi-colored lights hanging in the trees in Planet Snoopy. Right now. During Haunt. Also, this video shows a bunch of the WinterFest updates since last week.
Keep in mind that this is all being done during the final two weeks of Haunt.
Keep in mind that this is all being done during the final two weeks of Haunt.
Given that this is their first year, I am, personally, giving them a pass.
They are starting from scratch, installing a massive, new event. They will have to compete with Christmas Town, which has had the luxury of growing slowly over several years. Also, it appears that their Winterfest will need to have all of the same elements as the sister events across the chain. As a result, they have what appears from the outside to be an overwhelming number of things to do in a short period of time.
I doubt they know exactly how long the changeover will actually take. I’d rather they make conservative estimates and give themselves extra time this year in case things go wrong.
Having the lights installed and turned off isn’t unusual in any case. BGW leaves some of theirs mounted year-round. I can’t fathom how either park would be able to complete the full load in and outs between their Haloween and winter everts otherwise.
Finally, what is “tacky” about Christmas lights?
They are starting from scratch, installing a massive, new event. They will have to compete with Christmas Town, which has had the luxury of growing slowly over several years. Also, it appears that their Winterfest will need to have all of the same elements as the sister events across the chain. As a result, they have what appears from the outside to be an overwhelming number of things to do in a short period of time.
I doubt they know exactly how long the changeover will actually take. I’d rather they make conservative estimates and give themselves extra time this year in case things go wrong.
Having the lights installed and turned off isn’t unusual in any case. BGW leaves some of theirs mounted year-round. I can’t fathom how either park would be able to complete the full load in and outs between their Haloween and winter everts otherwise.
Finally, what is “tacky” about Christmas lights?
Maybe @mtorange meant “tacky” in an affectionate sense? As in the big, colorful Christmas lights? That would certainly make sense in Planet Snoopy.
The amount of Winterfest work being done already is tremendous. All of the candy apples in Candy Apple Grove have strands of spherical lights hanging off them in a “tree” formation. Giant circular stamped concrete pads have been poured by the flagpoles outside the entrance and between Victoria Gardens and Drop Tower; I’m almost certain these are foundations for the giant Christmas trees. And I noticed huge show light poles have been erected in the new festival plaza by Windseeker; I imagine one of the showlike experiences like the Coca-Cola Polar Plaza DJ or the giant snow globe will go here.
I doubt Winterfest will be this intrusive on Haunt in future seasons. For example, literally none of the props from the landscape islands in Cleaver Brothers Carnival are in place this year, making the scare zone seem less decorated, but that’s only because the landscape islands are still torn apart by excavation and construction of new power infrastructure.
Even still, it’s really fun watching all the Winterfest elements slowly come into place. This event is going to be enormous.
The amount of Winterfest work being done already is tremendous. All of the candy apples in Candy Apple Grove have strands of spherical lights hanging off them in a “tree” formation. Giant circular stamped concrete pads have been poured by the flagpoles outside the entrance and between Victoria Gardens and Drop Tower; I’m almost certain these are foundations for the giant Christmas trees. And I noticed huge show light poles have been erected in the new festival plaza by Windseeker; I imagine one of the showlike experiences like the Coca-Cola Polar Plaza DJ or the giant snow globe will go here.
I doubt Winterfest will be this intrusive on Haunt in future seasons. For example, literally none of the props from the landscape islands in Cleaver Brothers Carnival are in place this year, making the scare zone seem less decorated, but that’s only because the landscape islands are still torn apart by excavation and construction of new power infrastructure.
Even still, it’s really fun watching all the Winterfest elements slowly come into place. This event is going to be enormous.
Ok, so after looking around the park yesterday here are my thoughts. First of all I am a christmas light nerd, for the last 15 or so years I have done a light display all controlled by computer and synced to music, I lost count at 80,000 lights.
The lights that were referred to above as "tacky"in Planet Snoopy....they are just that but fit that area perfectly. One thing about those lights though are the fact that they are very dim. In fact I think during the day they will look much better than at night. Those lights have a single white C9 LED bulb inside which is not very bright. I tried out one of each color bulb 2 years ago when those lights first came out and it took changing them over to 25 watt equavilent color matched LEDs to make them look decent. I think the lights that are way up at the top will bascially be invisable.
The up lights installed around all the trees in the park (there are a ton of them) should really light up the park, and seeing that they are all DMX based could be controlled by area or parkwide in a massive show.
The Ice rink is coming along nicely, it is going to be huge. One thing that I hope does not happen is those snow globe cabanas are put along the Ice rink and blocks all the viewing areas for it, I havent read where those are going, maybe I missed it.
The Candy Apple Grove area is completely done up in RGB Pixel lights, all the giant candy apples are made into trees and the real taller trees are covered from the trunk way on up onto the branches. Not sure of their plans for those but that is going to be a massive programming nightmare. They also stapled the lights to the trees, basically bulb by bulb. That is super skeychy for the fragile wiring of pixel lights for both installing and for taking down. Pixel lights also for me anyhow dont scream christmas, they arent super bright and dont offer those millions of pinpoins of light that traditional LED and incandecsent bulbs produce. For the Effiel Tower tree I hope they use a superbright pixel. The patterns and things they can display on that will be amazing.
They do have traditional LED christmas lights up around the caroseul, those will look great.
Overall im super excited for this new event, they have really done a ton of work already and you can tell they are planning for years to come. They are burring and hardwiring just about every flower be in the park.
The lights that were referred to above as "tacky"in Planet Snoopy....they are just that but fit that area perfectly. One thing about those lights though are the fact that they are very dim. In fact I think during the day they will look much better than at night. Those lights have a single white C9 LED bulb inside which is not very bright. I tried out one of each color bulb 2 years ago when those lights first came out and it took changing them over to 25 watt equavilent color matched LEDs to make them look decent. I think the lights that are way up at the top will bascially be invisable.
The up lights installed around all the trees in the park (there are a ton of them) should really light up the park, and seeing that they are all DMX based could be controlled by area or parkwide in a massive show.
The Ice rink is coming along nicely, it is going to be huge. One thing that I hope does not happen is those snow globe cabanas are put along the Ice rink and blocks all the viewing areas for it, I havent read where those are going, maybe I missed it.
The Candy Apple Grove area is completely done up in RGB Pixel lights, all the giant candy apples are made into trees and the real taller trees are covered from the trunk way on up onto the branches. Not sure of their plans for those but that is going to be a massive programming nightmare. They also stapled the lights to the trees, basically bulb by bulb. That is super skeychy for the fragile wiring of pixel lights for both installing and for taking down. Pixel lights also for me anyhow dont scream christmas, they arent super bright and dont offer those millions of pinpoins of light that traditional LED and incandecsent bulbs produce. For the Effiel Tower tree I hope they use a superbright pixel. The patterns and things they can display on that will be amazing.
They do have traditional LED christmas lights up around the caroseul, those will look great.
Overall im super excited for this new event, they have really done a ton of work already and you can tell they are planning for years to come. They are burring and hardwiring just about every flower be in the park.
One thing I noticed last night (hardly a large feat of work but shows they are knocking out the low-hanging fruit where possible to save time) is that the Cinnabon bakery store still says Cinnabon on the corner but about 10 feet away facing the in-progress skating rink is a sign on that bakery with the name "Mrs Claus' Kitchen" and there are probably many other small preps that I (and most others) didn't really notice.
Good eye! I assume the Cinnabon sign will stay up. It seems "Mrs. Claus' Kitchen" is a rename for Peppermint Patty's Candy Shop, which makes sense given that Cinnabon and Peppermint Patty's share a building even though they are two separate shops.
I definitely meant it like this! I tend to post more bluntly when I do it at 2am in the morning, HAH! I use the word tacky because I think of those homes that go all out for Christmas for things such as the “Tacky Light Christmas Tour” and stuff.
After sleeping on it, while originally concerned about how guests might feel about Christmas creeping into Haunt, I actually now welcome the changes as they are getting people excited for the event!
I’m gonna check everything out during the day tomorrow, I’ll post pictures if I remember this time!