This is my 100th post for this blog!! How exciting, and what a good way to celebrate by doing a review of White Christmas!
Last Friday night, my family and I went to the White Christmas event at WB Movie World on the Gold Coast. This event has been running now for a number of years, and has become a wonderful family addition to this park's event roster to balance out Australia's most popular Halloween Event (Fright Nights).
We have been to previous years White Christmas, and this years even lived up to the previous ones that we have experienced. It was a great experience, however there are a couple of things that could still be improved for the event as a whole.
Firstly, I was glad to see that the stands had disappeared from the main square, which made for a much more open event. The addition of the Fairy Garden in the main square was nice, but I must admit that I expected more from this from the advertising/website.
As usual Santa's area and the Parade were fantastically themed, and the lights were very beautiful. The light show itself was pretty much the same as the previous one, if I remember correctly, but that isn't a big deal.
The biggest problem that I had for the night was the noise. The main street sound was just booming from when the event started until when it ended. It was genuinely to loud for my 3 year old to cope with, and we had to watch the parade and lights away from the main street. I totally expect it to be loud, but it doesn't need to be deafening like Fright Nights. This is a very different target market, and I think they would do better by just turning it down a little bit.
The only other major complaint that we had was that the Carousel was closed for maintenance. I understand that this might have been out of Movie World's control, but if there is ever a time that you want that ride running, this is the time. Still it helped having the Junior Driving School open, with some Christmas lights inside it, as my daughter really enjoyed that!
We didn't partake in the Christmas Buffet, but I did hear that the food there was excellent. We went for the burgers from Gotham, which had very long queues (again can't really be helped) but the food quality was really high! My advice would be not to plan to eat in the park during the event if you can avoid it (which is hard with kids, I know). It is such a short event, it is a shame to queue for 45 minutes for food in a 3 hour event.
Apart from eating before or after the event, the other major tips I would give, is to park at the back of the car park, as close to the exit as possible. We did, and got out in a few minutes, while I'm sure some people would have taken an hour to get out. The other big tip, is to get there early. They were letting people with White Christmas tickets into the park (with wristbands) from about 4-4:30, and you can fit a couple of rides in before they actually close the park, and confine you to the roped off area for White Christmas.
Overall the event itself worked great, and was very enjoyable!! Kudos to Movie World for doing a great job with this event!
Oh that sounds like it was fun Dan! Pity about the noise levels and the long food lines, hopefully they get a few people also hitting them up with the same concerns!
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