Winterfestguy

In the spirit of nickel and dime, they do list a gold pass parking add-on for $87 Canadian dollars. Also the fine print says you have to purchase pass at your home park and may actually enforce that this year with such a cheap gold pass $99 Canadian dollars (about $75 USD)

The MVP sale on Canada Wonderland site indicates the Gold 2026 pass will be good for all 40 Six Flags parks. Looks like they might be having away the gate. Waiting to see what and when KI announces.

Not sure if Island Smokehouse and Coconut Cove Cafe have heat (know they have AC but not sure about the heating capability - and then there also has to be heat in a few sets of restrooms). Think building heating may be the biggest investment cost issue with trying to expand Winterfest into Soak City. The tubing hill currently in Action Zone could be relocated to the wave pool similar to how Kentucky Kingdom has their sledding hill in their wave pool. Move the vendor booths around the Tower over to Soak City to create the village (which opens up the very congested area currently around the Tower) and perhaps move Santa from Rivertown over to Soak City, maybe in a temporary heated “tent”. Add some lights in the trees and a few large garland trees to complete the village. It would be exciting if the park could pull this off, but very doubtful considering budget and personnel cutbacks happening in the new Six Flags environment. My biggest wish is that KI would bring back the KI singing penguin puppets to Winterfest 3.0 which were part of Santa’s Toy Factory at the original Winterfest as well as in Winterfest 2.0 (then got dropped when Tinker’s Toy Factory took over for the now Winterfest 3.0) - they were always a hit with all the kids and even adults. They still may be around someplace in the theater in deep storage and their soundtrack is likely in the archives.

Coastermania fans today were disappointed with this announcement to them early this morning and additional disappointment that TTD2 would not operate at all today for the event.

The Food and Wine festival misses the mark in my opinion and will be surprised if it returns as a profitable event. We were at the park Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and had a few observations - Forget about hearing any of the music since with both Food and Wine stages playing their music at the same time while the Grand Carousel belts out its music at the same time and all three being all overpowered by the loud sound of Hot Rhythm nights when it plays at the scheduled times, not the most pleasant enjoyment of the music - many people did not have any wine or food from the festival in the new circus tent (most brought food and drinks from other park locations or were just there to hear the music) - the food was overpriced for the portion size and rather limited in selections offered. The wine flight was probably the best alcohol deal. Nobody seemed to be playing the festival games but did like how they used all the empty wine bottles for a ring toss game for the kids. After seeing this how this festival was ran, I don’t have high hopes for Carnival in July.

Likely they have been rehearsing the new fountain show late at night and don’t want to spoil the premiere this weekend. The same thing happened last season with Icam being down as they rehearsed and fine tuned the show a week before its debut.

Materials arrive via FedEx in a nice box. If you are a season pass holder, drink wristband ticket, meal tickets, and fun pic ticket are in your season pass account. So excited for Coasterstock this year.

Since the vast majority of professional firework displays are made in China (and with increasing China tariffs), I wonder how the overall seasonal cost of the fireworks will fit into the 2025 park budget allotted for show. Or it may be the show goes on with the drones and only with fireworks added on the weekend.

I find it amusing that they turned on the I street cam for just a moment to capture a new shot of there being no snow and a sunny day (just after the dismantling of the ice rink, they turned off the I street cam to likely block construction view progress of the new gift shop and bar). The new still shot may fool some when thinking the I street cam is on when it’s not, especially since all snow has melted from the former still shot. Note in the new I street cam shot (likely taken a few weeks ago) still shows the Winterfest sign out front and you can see all the building construction over on the right.

Reading the notes on the blueprint in the upper right, the fabric roof cannot withstand a heavy wet snow weight, so would expect the fabric roof to be removed for Winterfest (which then the question becomes will this area be utilized for Winterfest at all?) The other 115 mph wind note is highly unlikely and even with climate change and more frequent thunderstorms with straight line winds, still likely a very slight risk for the structure (remember the Kings Island sign out front getting hit by a severe thunderstorm years back and having to be rebuilt?)

The I-street cam has been turned off for a few weeks now. Typically, right after Winterfest they turn it off so we can’t watch the ice rink and decorations being disassembled. However, this year the cam stayed up for most of February to watch the decking of the ice rink taken out exposing the actual fountain as well as the Eiffel Tower light stings being removed. Then they turned the cam off likely for the start of I-Street construction on the new gift shops. Likely won’t come back on line until passholder preview in April as not to spoil the big reveal.

In pass holder email today - no real surprises as everyone kind of already guessed ”To make space for these exciting new experiences, we’re retiring a few classics— Cyclos, Eye of the Storm, and the Raging Rapids River Ride. We know it’s hard to part with rides that have given us so many wonderful memories, but each farewell opens the door to a whole new chapter of memory-making fun.”

The event was sold out by late this afternoon. KI did a much better job of simplifying ticket purchases this year than they have in past as well. I do think it doesn’t make any difference how long it takes to reach maximum capacity for a sell out as long as the event sells out (and in this case sold out three month ahead of time)! There have been years where other parks such as CP Coastermania took over a week to sell out (but likely not this year at CP with two major coasters opening/re-opening). It will be exciting to see old friends and meet new coaster friends this May.

Weren’t some of these billboards in that area transformed for the Winterfest Shooting Star Drive-in theming with vintage billboard advertisements? Maybe they are just putting back the regular billboards?

I do like the one by Invertigo in Action Zone but wish they would winterize that one so that it would be open during Winterfest. I agree the worst restrooms are the ones in the Festhouse (don’t think they ever have had a major renovation) and the two single use ones in Area 72 (which have to be the grossest and smellest in all of the park. (KI should permanently closed the Mentor canteen which these are attached to since it is hardly ever open anyway and expand into a normal larger multi-stall restroom). There have been several complaints over the years about the inside front gate men’s room about having only one stall (which has not been good for the little ones when there is usually a line waiting for the one and only toilet).