Busch Gardens – Christmas Town
Saturday the 16th of November saw the opening day of the Busch Gardens, Tampa’s Christmas event called Christmas Town. Voted in the top 10 for USA Today’s top 10 theme park holiday event, it has grown stronger each year and is included with park admission. We were invited down to experience the opening night of Christmas Town and sample some of this years offerings at the Christmas Town Village.
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Christmas Town
Christmas Town has been running at the park since 2012. Originally running November through to New Years Eve, this year the event runs from November 16th until January 6th, with extended park hours on select days. (Check out the event calendar below)
The parks shows are transformed with a Christmas theme, such as the ice skating show in the Moroccan Palace changing from Turn It Up into Christmas on Ice. Over a million festive lights are added to the entire park to cement the Christmas spirit.
Before we look at this years event how about a glance into the past.
For the first two years of the event in 2012 and 2013, Christmas Town was a separately ticketed event. The event was similar to what Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party is at Magic Kingdom with an extra cost. The event cost $60 for adults and $20 dollars for children. There was a pass available for repeat visits to the event.
These first two years would feature an area called Snow World. This massively popular area brought real snow to Florida in an area where guests could build snowmen, throw snowballs in a practice area and ride down 8 ice themed slides. Children were warned to bring gloves as the stuff was genuinely cold. There were plenty more Christmas shows when it was a separately ticketed event including a Madagascar themed Christmas show and more.
The Snow World area took over 15,000 square feet with its shaved ice in the Gwazi Plaza area. Guests could meet with Santa and his elves, have pictures taken with penguins in the animal care center and ride the sing along train.
2014…
In 2014 Busch Gardens removed the price tag associated with Christmas Town saying including it into admission offered a better value for money. Snow World would not return but Busch Gardens would still offer Christmas shows and a dazzling spectacle of lights around the park.
The event would mainly run on weekends and offer Santa meet and greets, the sing along train rides, Christmas themed food and some of some rides would be open such as ShieKra, Cheetah Hunt and the new for 2014 Falcon’s Fury.
The event would continue to expand offering more food selections in the Christmas Village and in 2016 adding more meet and greets. This year at Rudolph’s Winter Wonderland guests could meet with Rudolph, Clarice, Yukon Cornelius and Bumble from the famous Christmas film. Guests could continue meeting Santa in his private study as well as ride the rides including Cobra’s Curse.
This leads into 2019
We headed down to Christmas Town last year in 2018 but as it was a weekday most of food stands were not open. The Christmas Village on opening day started at 4 pm and the park closed at 10 pm. We of course headed down early to check out the park in the day light and have a browse at Iron Gwazi. Keep an eye out for our picture update of that area coming soon.
They really do an excellent job covering the park in Christmas lights and decorations. The claim that over one million lights are used in the event certainly rings true. The entrance to the park is covered in lights, Christmas themed decorations and projections. Here’s what it looks like at night below.
It was actually fairly chilly on opening night, which got us in the spirit of Christmas pretty well. Even if our hearts are still yearning for Halloween.
This years shows…
The entertainment offerings this year includes The Holiday Sing-Along Train, Christmas on Ice show, Elmo’s Christmas Wish, Christmas From The Heart, Three Kings Journey, Carol of the Bells, and a new show in Dragon Fire Grill called the Most Wonderful Time. This show features a band and singers playing your favorite Christmas songs. The big rides also remain open throughout the event but most featured pretty high wait times throughout the evening with Cheetah Hunt frequently having a 75 minute wait.
Most of the entertainment offerings have been part of the event before but here’s a look at the showtimes for the opening day.
Shows
Christmas from the Heart in the Stanleyville Theater doesn’t begin showing until November 23rd so just remember that if you plan on visiting this week.
Elsewhere the Christmas on Ice skating show in the Moroccan Palace theater was full up during the 3 pm and 5 pm show. We were unable to see the 7 pm show but were lucky enough to see it last year. It’s a great show from the creators of the regular skating show Turn It Up. The show features Christmas themed music and dance that is fun for all the family. We were sad to miss it but as most of our party arrived at 6 pm due to traffic we had to prioritize other things at the event. It’s worth remembering that even though the park closes at 10 pm or later on a lot of the days the shows aren’t always on late.
Three Kings Journey featured some talented singers telling the story of their journey to Bethlehem. An excellent violinist also played to the crowd before the show. This small stage is located in the Bird Gardens area and only has a couple of benches for guests to sit on, so be prepared to stand for the duration.
More shows…
The Carol of the Bells light show once again returned on the Serengeti Overlook Restaurant running every 10-15 minutes from 5 pm. This fun dancing light show fills a little bit of the void left after the removal of The Osborne Family Lights at Hollywood Studios. Tens of thousands lights dance to seasonal music and this short show is always a good quick watch.
The Sing Along Train also returned playing Christmas Carols as you ride the train around the Serengeti. We didn’t jump on the train this year but it does still look great. The train only departs from the Nairobi station and is Christmas themed from 6 pm.
We also did not see Elmo’s Christmas Wish or The Most Wonderful Time as we prioritized the food in the Christmas Village and seeing the lights around the park.
Meet and Greets
Most of the park is covered in lights with some added meet and greets along the way. Santa returns and is available for meet and greets in the Nairobi section. Rudolph and pals are available once again in the Pantopia theater. Sugar plum fairies are scattered around the park with photo ops and a new area has been added this year called Merry Mint Lane.
This area is a chance to get up close with animal ambassadors and have photos with owls, penguins and more. The location is the animal care center and does also have a hot chocolate stand inside. These stands are where you purchase your refillable hot chocolate mug and are very popular. The wait time for the main stand in the Christmas Village reached 30 minutes at points so heading to this quieter stand may be a better option.
Lights
The park does an excellent job at covering most areas with lights. Stanleyville, Cheetah Hunt Walkway, Morocco are all plastered with lights but our favorite is the returning Luminosity Lane.
Luminosity lane is a light tunnel connecting Stanleyville and the Congo with a synchronized light show with popular Christmas tunes.
Here are some of our photos from around the park.
Food and Drink
Now on to what we think is the main event of Christmas Town. The food and drink!
The Christmas Town village opened at 4 pm and along with it were the food and drink cabins. What is great about the event similar to their Food and Wine and just like SeaWorld is the sampler lanyard. A 5 item food and drink sampler is $24.99 + tax and a 10 item sampler is $39.99 + tax. If you are an annual pass holder you get a 12 item sampler for the same price as the 10. You do not have to purchase the sampler item to buy food at the stalls but it will save you money in the long run and can be used until the end of the festival.
Using the sampler lanyard will give you the same sized food as if paying with cash but drinks do come slightly smaller.
For more information on the samplers click here.
Christmas Town Village
Armed with two 10 item sampler lanyards we got to work through the Christmas Town Village food selection. Of course the first stop is for alcohol. Over the course of the night we tried the Hot Toddy, Hot Apple Cider with Jack Daniels and the Hot Cocoa with Baileys. The Hot Cocoa with Baileys being the winner for us because you could actually taste the alcohol in it. It was so good we got it again later in the evening.
Our first food stop just so happened to be the stand with the longest wait. We waited about 30 minutes before we were eating our food but one of the items made it worth the wait.
Here our group tried the Chicken and Waffle Sandwich, Waffle Cristo and a couple of helpings of Beer Cheese Soup. The soup was delicious. Definitely the best food item we had all night, I’d even put it above the cheese soup at the Canada stand at Epcot’s Food and Wine festival. It was that good. The waffles were fine and as you’d expect but they were a little lukewarm. The Cristo was missing the cranberry sauce so was a little dry but we ended up pouring some of the Beer Cheese Soup on the top and it improved it ten fold.
Food continued…
Next up was Holiday Comforts. Not actually located within the Christmas Village but along the path towards the Flamingos and Sesame Street. To get to here was a snowy trail which due to the wind was just blowing foam back into the bushes. Hidden back here was also a Snowman photo op.
Holiday Comforts. Loaded Mash for us.
Here we got two orders of the loaded mash. They were all out of short rib so we ended up trying the Shredded Turkey and the Impossible Chili. The turkey was slightly cold and a bit forgettable, however the Impossible Chili was great. Just what is needed on a cold Florida day and had just the right amount of spice. It’s a shame about the turkey had it been warm it would have been tasty.
Now it was round to another booth not within the Christmas Village section, down near the Three Kings stage. Sliders & Melts the name of this booth. Below is a look at the selection.
They were all out of Pulled Pork Hash at this booth. We ended up getting the Mac & Cheese Melts and the Guava and Cheese Turnover. The Mac and Cheese was as expected quite a few carbs packed into this little sandwich but it was at least hot. We got the the last one of the Turnover and it was tasty. The pastry was sweet and the guava was sweet. It came cold but probably would have been even tastier warm.
Dessert time…
It was time to end the evening with something sweet as we really were getting full. The portion sizes are good at the event so expect to be filled up by the time you leave. Two hot cocoas with Baileys definitely didn’t help but hey they were great. Back in the Christmas Town Village was the North Pole Bakery our final stop.
Here we grabbed the Festive Donut Skewer and because they were all out of the Pumpkin Cheesecake Cup we went with the Dessert Pretzel Sticks. The donuts were good, a bit too cinnamon-y for myself but not bad at all we were just very full at this point. The pretzels were cold and probably the worst item we had all evening! Never mind!
That was the end of our sampling journey because we were just so full. Most of the stuff we tried we would definitely eat again and even though we got a free sampler we would definitely purchase one to try more of the food. There were plenty more stalls of food and a couple more of frozen drinks dotted around the park. This page has a list of everything on offer.
Popular in the cold…
The most popular stand by far was the regular hot cocoa stand and below is a picture of what is on offer at one of the stands not in the Christmas Town Village.
As our first proper Christmas Town experience we really enjoyed ourselves. There was plenty of shows to see, food to eat and rides to ride. Considering it is included in park admission this event really is one of the better Christmas events on offer. We had a great time even though we did not ride and rides or see a couple of the shows.
Have you been to Christmas Town at Busch Gardens? What did you think? Let us know in the comments below.
