Winterfestguy

There was one year at Haunt where they had a Halloween themed buffet in the International Street Restaurant. I remember looking out and seeing the fog overtake the old pedestals in the fountain as well as the scare actors roam around International Street. It’s a shame that SF misses good opportunities like the buffet/fountain show viewing from the restaurant.

Being the first night of Haunt and just as expected, many season pass holders came out including lots of families with their large buggy wagon strollers, children under 10, and even saw several babies maybe 1 year old in their mothers arms. There did not seem to be many lines at the houses unlike other years likely because like me, refuse to pay for something that used to be free and pretty much the same every year. However, I do agree it is worth the money to do the Conjuring Beyond Fear experience and wanted to see for myself after reading about experiences at CP. Conjuring Beyond Fear was very well put together and you could tell a lot of thought went into it. I was disappointed in the scare zones as the scareactors were playing up to the little kids instead of scaring folks walking through like me. I walked behind a father of a 5 year old filming his little boy going through Hooked as the little boy chatted with each pirate instead of being scared by them (or maybe they are supposed to be very friendly pirates and in pumpkin eater, friendly pumpkin gut eaters?). Ghouls Gone Wild and Nyte Walkers seem to be more G content rated for families and pretty much the same with a few different songs (and there were lots of kids and families in the audience of both, so seems like Haunt has moved away from the adult theme for mature audiences only. I do miss Dead Awakenings and Hot Blooded for sure.) Exceptional pub burger at the Brewhouse as expected but the place wasn’t super busy. The longest food line seemed to be at Skyline but then again, that place always has a long line being so slow. Considering all the budget cuts lately, my Haunt experience was just okay, not the best and not the worst.

Many of the Winterfest white lights were never removed from the trees as you could still see the strings on the trees this spring/summer, so imagine they might be testing to see what still works and what doesn’t - or maybe they will use the lighted trees with white lights for Haunt as well to get their money out of them.

And to think the 52 week high was $49.77 and has gone down down down from there

Carowinds quietly removed the parade from their Winterfest line up, changed to daytime hours, and rumors of no ice skating there as well. Wonder when or if KI will make the same announcement? The puzzle pieces start coming into focus for KI as no Tinkers means one less show and maybe an empty theater as well. Enjoy what’s left as KI Winterfest 3.0 as it likely comes to a sudden end this season.

Six Flags does not like winter events as evidenced by cutting 4 holiday events this year from parks. Definitely sadly looking like this will be the last year for KI Winterfest especially given Carowinds has just cut their nighttime hours from their original calendar this season. Hopefully, KI doesn’t follow this budget hourly cutting trend.

Both KI and CP have had sleepovers in the park after hours before with proceeds benefiting charity - KI in 2019 and CP in 2021

Since the parade used many characters from Tinkers, especially Santa, wonder if that means the Winterfest parade has been cut too? Guess we will have to watch if the floats start appearing out of storage this fall behind The Racer.

This will make a lot of families with kids sad. Tinkers (in several forms) has been a tradition since Winterfest 1.0 - Six Flags doesn’t like winter events and with budget cuts everywhere this may be the end of Winterfest 3.0 after this season. Wonder where the tombstone will be for Tinkers Toy Factory at Haunt this year?

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.