Timchat2

It's interesting to see Dollywood bring back more of the eclectic mix of outside performers like Moto Motion and Artrageous. A lot of park fans seemed to be missing the variety of shows that came with Festival of Nations and this seems to be a bit of a return to that spirit.

Maybe that was why one of the engines was "under wraps" at Winter Chill Out this year.

Does this leave Cedar Point as the only major park with coal-fired steam engines?

Depending on how much extra programming is involved, it should be relatively "easy" to switch out the screen media, LED lighting, etc. for a holiday overlay. Perhaps guests could be helping to recapture escaped jingle bells for a holiday concert at the Phantom Theater.

The 50th celebration at Six Flags Great America will likely be more elaborate than Kings Dominion because SFGAm is probably closer to an "over-performing" park for the Six Flags chain than KD.

With Grand Carnivale being discontinued at the other parks last year I thought we were going to see a Kings Island Nights type event for the summer of 2025. Maybe it will happen for 2026.

https://playbill.com/job/splash-water-parade-tour/0d220d86-cd54-473a-a3f7-1e5cc4ecf182 An audition notice has been posted for the 2026 tour of the Splash! Water Parade. The parade will perform at Six Flags Over Texas, Six Flags Over Georgia, Dorney Park, Valleyfair, Kings Dominion and Carowinds. I had sort of expected Splash! to take the place of Grand Carnivale as a summertime parade in 2026, so it's interesting to see that Kings Island isn't listed.

Guests of Kings Island appear to embrace WinterFest at a level that makes the Six Flags chain happy enough to allow Kings Island's WinterFest to remain at this scale, considering the cuts at Carowinds and the altogether cancellation at Kings Dominion. Kings Island has received two large new productions in the last two seasons with Yuletide Follies and Tinker's Jingle Bell Ball while nearly all of the other Six Flags parks continue to have the same and/or reduced shows at their holiday events.

We finally made it to Christmas at Kentucky Kingdom. While the event is modest in scale, we had a very pleasant evening. It was a bit surreal to have Dollywood-style cinnamon bread but nice to have a seasonal variation like cranberry cinnamon bread with cranberry icing. The snow tubing hill set up in the wave pool was quite steep and fast, which was a contrast to the one at Kings Island's WinterFest (which might be limited by the available space in Action Zone). The light coverage on a number of the buildings was impressive to go with the "house style" of the Herschend parks even if it perhaps lacked some of the precision of Dollywood or Silver Dollar City. Still though, the amount of photos being taken made it clear guests liked what they were seeing. It's nice to have another holiday park event relatively close to the Greater Cincinnati area. Hopefully it will stick around and flourish in the years to come.

Das Festhaus at Busch Gardens Williamsburg still serves German food along with more accessible options like pizza. It's interesting that Cincinnati's German heritage and the popularity of the various area Oktoberfest events doesn't translate to the tastes of Kings Island guests.

Seeing all the specifics is really driving home how incredible it is that our home park is getting a new dark ride of this scale. Really looking forward to seeing how this all comes together!

At this point in the season we've covered just about all of the WinterFest 2025 menu items. While favorites are always a matter of taste (fresh-cut fries with a bunch of tasty toppings are the perfect winter comfort food for me), here is our approximate rankings: Holiday Dinner Fries It’s a Wonderful Chop Turkey Dinner Ball Honey Ham Fries Grandma’s Holiday Meatball Hoagie Broccoli Cheddar Chowder White Chicken Chili Holiday Meatloaf Burger Shepherd’s Pie “You Mac Me So Happy” Christmas Turkey Sandwich Roasted Turkey Breast Honey Pork Loin Naughty List Chicken Tenders The lower items aren't bad exactly, just not as uniquely good as the ones higher up. It's still great to see the park offering so many seasonal items on the dining plan.

Any possibility that the screens might be used to give the ride a holiday overlay during WinterFest?

From my understanding the Worlds of Fun costume department aka "The Sparkle Factory" produces (or produced if that's no longer the arrangement) the costumes for the major seasonal events like Grand Carnivale and WinterFest at the legacy Cedar Fair parks. The individual parks likely take care of their own park-level productions, particularly at larger parks like Kings Island and Cedar Point.

The ridership number for Six Flags New England seems surprisingly high. While it certainly sits in a densely populated part of the country, the park doesn't seem to come up often as a major player in the chain.

A number of the Six Flags parks have been posting statistics about the 2025 season via social media, in particular ridership totals: Worlds of Fun - 5,674,255 Six Flags St. Louis - 5,909,044 Six Flags Over Georgia - 6,862,186 Kings Dominion - 10,668,737 Carowinds - 12,445,245 Six Flags New England - 15,017,076 Kings Island - 22,858,387 Canada's Wonderland - 25,832,308 Cedar Point's Wrapped post doesn't provide specific ridership numbers. In the chain-wide Wrapped post, Knott's Berry Farm is shown as the most visited park. The top six visitor cities were also included:

I wonder if any melodies from Phantom Theater Encore will make it into the ride's soundtrack, even just as a musical Easter egg.

The app is showing Songs of the Nativity near the carousel pavilion, which might explain the rigging that appeared there near the end of Haunt:

Sweet Spot has some unique autumn offerings this weekend along with a few remaining Haunt items:

WinterFest preparations around the park:

The Racer is also listed as "Both Sides" this year.

Ride availability at WinterFest: https://www.sixflags.com/kingsisland/winterfest/ride-availability

It would be really interesting to see what specific parks are "outperforming" and "underperforming". The presentation really focused on the differences between those two groupings.

Yuletide Follies is fantastic. With the talk of Tinker's Toy Factory possiblyy ending I had some hope Yuletide would have moved into the Kings Island Theater. From what I understand the original intent was to have the show spread to the other WinterFest parks but that doesn't appear to be happening now.

The last remaining What the Dickens was at Canada's Wonderland. Their version was cute but Kings Island had the stronger performers. This year What the Dickens is being replaced with a new comedy show called Small Town Snowmance, playing into the tropes of Hallmark Christmas movies.