Tonight marks the final evening of the first ever WinterFest at California’s Great America, which ran for about a month from Thanksgiving up to today. This is the first time since the park’s first season that it was open for the holidays. I was able to visit earlier this week, and while the event wasn’t perfect, the level of detail in the holiday theming was high quality, and the event left a very positive impression with lots of Winter-y things to do and see.
WinterFest Decoration and Activities
Something interesting that Great America did for WinterFest was to only open up basically the front half of the park for the event. The benefit of this is that the while the certain attractions were unavailable, the areas of the park that were open could be completely decorated. There were no open sections that felt dark or forgotten, it was all part of the show.
WinterFest Map for California’s Great America showing the open sections of the park. As Great American Thrills pointed out to me, there are a couple typos on here, see if you can find ’em.
There also was the fun benefit that in order to create a full loop for guests, Great America opened and decorated a service path (Candy Cane Lane on the map). It was kind of fun for a longtime park visitor and theme park dork to get to go “behind the scenes” for a little bit. This was also the first moment where I was really impressed by the level of effort in the decoration. I expected it to have Christmas lights and maybe some oversized plastic candy canes, but there were actually large displays, character photo-ops, and some cool audio/visual lighting effects. This was the kind of stuff that was beyond my expectations.
Decorations on Candy Cane Lane.
That’s a lot of Christmas lights…
The lighting decoration included a lot of similar stuff to what was during their Taste of Orleans festival in Orleans Place, with the projected lighting on the ground and illuminated buildings and trees. The decorations in Orleans Place this time around were actually all constantly in a light show, synced to the sound track of various Christmas songs. The lights didn’t “stand still” once as far as I could tell.
Orleans Place with New Orleans tinted Christmas decorations.
There were actually a lot of photo op and meet-and-greet sections. Planet Snoopy was heavily decorated, and there were lots of peanuts characters around, all dressed in their winter clothes from the Peantus Christmas Special. There were a lot of families at the park and Planet Snoopy was pretty popular. Throughout the rest of the park were photo ops with other Christmas characters, like Gingerbread men and toy soldiers, and of course a Santa station (I didn’t check if it was still open after Christmas).
Toy soldiers on the midway meeting guests.
Photo op for St. Nick
Along with all this there were multiple activities for WinterFest. The biggest of those was the ice skating in front of Carousel Columbia. The large pool/fountain was turned into a skating rink, and it seemed to have a steady stream of guests skating and watching (despite being an upcharge attraction). It’s actually a pretty good size rink, bigger than a lot of temporary holiday rinks in the Bay Area.
Ice skating on the “lake” in front of Carousel Columbia.
There were also live reindeer you could pet, areas for things like cookie and ornament decorating, a “post office” where kids could write letters to Santa (which then hung in the window), and a path of craftspeople selling gifts (although only a few were open when I was there, probably since it was post Christmas).
Not a lot of craft sellers were open, but this guy was, and his stuff was probably delicious.
The other big “WinterFest” attractions were the multiple shows throughout the evening. Some were out along the paths, with groups of carolers and singers, while there were multiple in the big theaters and on the stage set-up behind Carousel Columbia. All the shows had numerous performances throughout the night, and were frequent enough that I kept accidentally seeing parts of the outdoor ones (every time I was in line for Gold Striker, for example).
Lots of performance on the big stage in front of the big tree.
Rides and Crowds
Speaking of Gold Striker, one of the few disappointments with WinterFest was the number of open attractions, particularly with what seemed like a decent sized crowd at the park. With only Gold Striker and Flight Deck as big coasters open, and just a few other adult sized flat rides open, lines were longer than I’m used to. Flight Decks line was spilling out of its entrance, and Delirium and Rue Le Dodge had longer lines than I can remember ever seeing. Gold Strikers was also longer than I’ve seen in awhile, but it has really good operations and was moving quickly so it wasn’t too bad. I actually ended up just riding it, partly because on my first ride it felt faster than I remember it ever being. Not sure if it was because of the cold, or it was dark so my senses were a little distorted, but it seems like its improving with age rather than getting rougher or slower. Plus I loved the decoration of the reindeer and sleigh heading down the roof of the tunnel on the first drop.
Reindeer on Gold Striker.
A few lights decorating the structure of Gold Striker.
But, wishing more rides were open was a minor complaint, as many of the guests at the park were families, and basically all of Planet Snoopy was open. Plus, I usually only ride Flight Deck and Gold Striker anyway, but it would have helped to thin the crowds on the midway and the lines for the rides, if a little more were open, especially since the park only operates for a five hour window in the evening. I was surprised that Mass Effect New Earth wasn’t open since it has a big capacity, is basically family friendly, is their newest ride, and is right in the middle of the open section. My guess is they had issues staffing the live actor needed for the ride, but it would have been great if it could have been open.
Seems like Mass Effect would have been an obvious ride to have open, only guesses why it wasn’t.
I also would have loved more holiday decorations on the rides. The reindeer on Gold Striker were great, and it had a few other lights on it, but I would have loved to see it and flight deck with Christmas Lights all over the structure. That’s a pretty minor thing though, more an area for improvement than complaint.
Flight Deck could use some Christmas lights…
It does seem very likely that in future WinterFests, Patriot will be open. It falls right in the middle of the open area of the park, and it looks like the cosmetic aspects are already really close to being finished. As best I could tell in the dark it is completely painted, and the new entrance sign is up. I’m guessing the work remaining is converting the station, but hopefully it will be opening near the start of the new season when California’s Great America reopens at the end of March.
Patriot sure looks close to ready already.
And look, the area under Patriot is already decorated!
While I would have loved for a few more rides to be open, and a few more decorations on the rides, and for a few more hot chocolate stands, I think its safe to say WinterFest was a success. I was pleasantly surprised at completeness and quality of the decorations. The frequency and number of performances, singers, and meet-and-greets was also beyond my expectations, and no part of the park looked forgotten or neglected. Everything was brightly lit and felt like part of WinterFest. I think the only other downside of it was because it was only open at night, I think some families with young kids had a hard time making it. Starting a little earlier than 5PM would have allowed families to spend a few hours at the park and still get small kids home in time for bed, especially if they were coming from further parts of the Bay Area (or, say, being on vacation in San Francisco). But again, for the most part I think WinterFest was a success, and I’ll be interested to see whether it expands next year to include more of the park, or more open rides in the front half of the park. It will also be interesting to see if it was enough of a draw that the park moves closer to full year ’round operations.
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Thanks for reading, if you’ve been to WinterFest, let us know what you think in the comments below. And of course be sure to follow Coaster101 on Facebook and Twitter for lots of end of year features and offseason updates!
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