WinterFest

[Nicole]

We just left Winterfest, and it was lovely again this year.

The park is blanketed in pretty lights, and saturated with interesting, seasonal food. I loved feeding the animals, and the drive through light display was fun. Overall, it is a fantastic event.

Was it perfect? No. I still think Caro’s event is better. The lights, music, and carriage rides were top notch, when we visited NC a few years ago.

Separately, there were a few glaring weaknesses at KD tonight. While we loved almost everything we ate (with the decided exception of the cinnamon pull-apart brick), it was a struggle to be served. Our soups, sandwiches, and apple fries took 20 minutes, and came out one by one, so everything got cold. The crepe stand didn’t seem to want to take our order at all (the apple bacon crepe is fantastic). The turkey sandwich staff was typically slow (Wayside is always frustrating). Perhaps most irritatingly, neither ice cream parlor was open.

KD also needs to work on isolating their soundtracks. This is something BGW generally does very well. Competing holiday tunes are unpleasantly discordant.

Finally, I wish there were more indoor seating areas. It wasn’t too bad tonight, but when it gets colder it will be uncomfortable.

All of that said, Winterfest is a great event. I would strongly recommend that everyone visit, even if you usually stick to Christmas Town. The decorations are stunning, the activities are engaging, the food is delicious, and the shopping is fun. Equally importantly, Winterfest has a completely different feel than CT. It is a great compliment to that older event.

 

[Zachary]

Is there any demand for a WinterFest food review? I tend to think that KD deserves a ton of credit for all of the seasonal offerings they've put together, but it's also a major time and money investment for us to think about undertaking.

(Feel free to just react to this post with the ? emoji if it's something you'd really like to see and if there are a fair number of people interested, we'll consider it.)

 

[mwhinva]

We just left Winterfest, and it was lovely again this year.

The park is blanketed in pretty lights, and saturated with interesting, seasonal food. I loved feeding the animals, and the drive through light display was fun. Overall, it is a fantastic event.

Was it perfect? No. I still think Caro’s event is better. The lights, music, and carriage rides were top notch, when we visited NC a few years ago.

Separately, there were a few glaring weaknesses at KD tonight. While we loved almost everything we ate (with the decided exception of the cinnamon pull-apart brick), it was a struggle to be served. Our soups, sandwiches, and apple fries took 20 minutes, and came out one by one, so everything got cold. The crepe stand didn’t seem to want to take our order at all (the apple bacon crepe is fantastic). The turkey sandwich staff was typically slow (Wayside is always frustrating). Perhaps most irritatingly, neither ice cream parlor was open.

KD also needs to work on isolating their soundtracks. This is something BGW generally does very well. Competing holiday tunes are unpleasantly discordant.

Finally, I wish there were more indoor seating areas. It wasn’t too bad tonight, but when it gets colder it will be uncomfortable.

All of that said, Winterfest is a great event. I would strongly recommend that everyone visit, even if you usually stick to Christmas Town. The decorations are stunning, the activities are engaging, the food is delicious, and the shopping is fun. Equally importantly, Winterfest has a completely different feel than CT. It is a great compliment to that older event.

The KD food service has always been the achillies heel of the park. No matter how hard the park improves food quality, menus, and receipes; it always comes down to poor training/supervision of food prep and delivery.

I think KD needs to seriously look at investing in a "Harmony Hall" food/entertainment facility. It would allow 4-5 food venues to be under one roof. They would be able to adjust staffing as needed. The park would also have a indoor show facility to take advantage of.

There seems to always be a disconnect between upper food department management and the food location managers/supervisors. Sometimes I think the lower level food management needs to step in and get their "Hands Dirty" as the lines grow during the daily food rush hours. They need to develop food prep/delivery methodologies to improve service times. Like a line worker whose only responsibilities are to group the meal orders together, in the order received, and get them to the cashier for delivery to the customer. I'm sure there are other food policies/methodologies that could be implemented. It comes down to Training.

The other main issue is daily staffing. The "staffing formula" used across the Cedar Fair chain needs to have some tweaking done to have a better balance between staying within a monetary budget and customer service. The formula is too skewed to saving a buck at the expense of customer service. Ocassionally, you have to sacrifice a buck to ensure better customer service in the food department (and more sales).

Not sure what KD can do with the park-wide sound tracks. BGW has the advantage of smaller, isolated villages spead out over the geography. Easier to control sound isolation in my opinion. Maybe they can adjust the volume, speaker location, and speaker orientation?

As to the entertainment venues, see my post above.

 

[Nicole]

To be clear, I don’t personally care about having more indoor entertainment venues (I get that others do). My specific complaint is the lack heated dining areas. Our choice was to sit outside, or to walk to one of fairly distant locations, while our food got cold. I think BGW’s heated tents are an excellent solution.

On the issue of buildings, I was struck by the dearth of shops outside of I Street. The small vendors were scattered all over the park, but the normal gift shops had been converted to activity facilities. I thought it was an interesting choice from a revenue perspective. I assume they have done the math, and it makes sense. It is just such a different model from the rest of the industry (from my observations). It made me wonder why they couldn’t use some of the Haunt buildings. On the other hand, they already have a massive job, converting from their Halloween event to Winterfest.

Ultimately, as I said, it was a fantastic event, overall.

 

[jeffh]

To be clear, I don’t personally care about having more indoor entertainment venues (I get that others do). My specific complaint is the lack heated dining areas. Our choice was to sit outside, or to walk to one of fairly distant locations, while our food got cold. I think BGW’s heated tents are an excellent solution.

This is exactly what I told KD as part of the feedback last year, that during busy nights the lines were flowing out the doors of the restaurants that were open and then half the people were stuck eating outside in the cold, yet there were two restaurants with heated indoor seating (Outer Hanks and Hungry Hippo) that were blocked off!

So they really improved things for this year by now having Juke Box Diner open... with cold outdoor seating... and the two with heated indoor seating still blocked off.

Oy Vey.

 

[BGW Family]

Many Carowinds stores were also turned into activities this year. Very few merchandise stores. They enclosed the Harmony Hall covered patio, but everyone was inside the packed Harmony Hall building.

 

[mwhinva]

This is exactly what I told KD as part of the feedback last year, that during busy nights the lines were flowing out the doors of the restaurants that were open and then half the people were stuck eating outside in the cold, yet there were two restaurants with heated indoor seating (Outer Hanks and Hungry Hippo) that were blocked off!

So they really improved things for this year by now having Juke Box Diner open... with cold outdoor seating... and the two with heated indoor seating still blocked off.

Oy Vey.

I can't imagine why KD could not accomodate a medium size heated dining tent (10-12 tables) next to Dashers Diner (Wayside Grill). It could be set up between it and the log flume. That path is a dead-end anyway during Winter Fest. Jukebox Diner has a large patio that could accomodate 2 medium size tents on either side of the central entrance. Heck, they could place a heated dining tent next to the food truck in CAG.

Course, I'm not sure if the park can do anything this year.

 

[Mushroom]

The covered dining area on the right (Lumber Co.) side of Wayside was surprisingly warm because there were easily half a dozen heaters under there, although to be totally honest I’m not sure how safe it is having a bunch of propane heaters in a covered space. But I’ll let the park’s safety people worry about that.

 

[Nicole]

I wasn’t too cold there yesterday, but as I said, it was a relatively mild evening. I’d freeze there on a normal December night.

 

[Jonesta6]

Went last night, overall it was good and not too crowded. I think the key to enjoying it was not having any expectations.

The good: the lights were really good everywhere. There seemed to be a really good focus on theatrics and having something to do around every corner. Apple fries. Twisted Timbers was running really good, and the line was relatively short. I almost got to pet a camel. Even though we stayed off the ice, the pricing was not too high, especially if we opted for the 4-person discount.

The not so good: chaos for the food truck ordering - especially when it was show time. Uncertainty of where special holiday food was being offered. Victoria's pizza (Prancer?) either not offering the special holiday menu items or not having anything ready to go (hard to tell). The sleigh ride movie being shot for a 4D theatre but played for essentially raised benches.

The comical: the guy on the food truck taking my apple fries order for $4.73 (with gold pass discount) and needed a calculator to give change from a $5. The sleigh ride movie had to be restarted because the sound was off and the house lights stayed on. Having not been in that theatre since SpongeBob, it seemed comical how ghetto the seating arrangements were.

All in all, great event and looking forwards to going back.

 

[belsaas]

Very proud of the cookie I made in Mrs. Claus's workshop.

 

[mwhinva]

View attachment 18995
Very proud of the cookie I made in Mrs. Claus's workshop.

Best decorated cookie I've seen to date!

The only suggestion I could make to the park for Mrs. Claus's Kitchen is to have a couple more icing colors like yellow-gold and an "ice" blue in addition to the green, red, and white. Wait, they had brown icing?

 

[Thomas]

The brown icing is actually what they use to decorate the bathroom walls at KD.

 

[belsaas]

Red + Green equals brown.

@Nicole accused me of using too much science while decorating. ?

 

[mwhinva]

The brown icing is actually what they use to decorate the bathroom walls at KD.

So I take it that Thomas was at KD that day? (I thought all "Fecal Throwers" were banned from all parks).

 

[belsaas]

Thomas tried to get in, but his skin Immediately burst into flames.

We had to take him to the hospital.

 

[horsesboy]

Thomas tried to get in, but his skin Immediately burst into flames.

We had to take him to the hospital.

I would have thought that with the holy water fountains on International Street covered up by the ice rink he would be ok. Guess not.

 

[Thomas]

 

[UncleDuncan]

So I take it that Thomas was at KD that day? (I thought all "Fecal Throwers" were banned from all parks).

You can only get banned if you get caught.

 

[jeffh]

Park Closed - Dec. 13
Due to anticipated inclement weather, the park will not open this evening, Dec. 13, for WinterFest. We apologize for any inconvenience and look forward to welcoming you to another night of WinterFest select nights through Jan. 1. Tickets dated for today will be honored through Jan. 1.