Amusement Parks and Zoos
Light Up for the Holidays
By Kevin Moffett

An Illuminated Christmas, Part I
“Zoolights”
Cleveland Metroparks Zoo,
Cleveland, Ohio
December 6 to 23, 26 to 30

Many parks and attractions in the northern United States, while not able to open their entire facilities during the winter months, began featuring entertainment of one kind or another during the holiday season. While the festivities differ from park to park, most included as their centerpiece some sort of light display.

In December, Cleveland Metroparks Zoo again welcomed guests to its Zoolights festival, a monthlong event that has been attracting visitors from the Cleveland area since 1990 for the time-honored combination of holiday lights, puppet shows, and quartered animals.

“We started small,” said Sue Allen, manager of marketing and public relations for Cleveland Metroparks. “We had a lot of competition around Cleveland. General Electric and the city offered a light show, which was free to the public. We cautiously tested the waters, adding more lights and more entertainment every year.”

Like most winter festivals, Zoolights’ offerings were vast and assorted, appealing to young and old, the cold tolerant and cold intolerant. Visitors were able to view the wondrous light displays on foot or aboard the ZooTram, festively renamed the “Sleighbell Express,” where they were encouraged to sing carols and react with mirth to the Christmas regalia.

The zoo trotted out some of its hardier animals for Zoolights: wolves, bears, and reindeer, all prowling and energetic in this, their most active season. There were also ice carving, hot cider, and plenty of live (and indoor) seasonal entertainment and activities, including puppet shows, celebrity storytelling, and, of course, Santa Claus, who was holding forth among the rhinos and hippos in the Pachyderm Building, which seems somehow perfectly appropriate.

Metroparks Zoo donated proceeds from the sale of Santa photos to the American Association of Zookeepers.

New for 2002, a model railroad display courtesy of Depot Train & Hobby was a favorite among children. Also, “Santa’s Late,” a virtual voyage with Santa as he makes a mad midnight dash to save Christmas, kept folks in suspense at the SimEx theater.

Though the Metroparks Zoo is open through the winter season, Zoolights did involve minor staff shuffling. In December, the zoo observes its usual closing time of 5 p.m. but reopens a half-hour later for the nightly festival. “Some seasonal employees came back from school,” said Allen, “and we encouraged volunteers from the business community to string lights and help with maintenance.”

There was also plenty of sponsorship, with United Wireless acting as title sponsor, and local television station WKYC Channel 3 and WGAR, a local radio station, sponsoring the event as well.

In 2001, Metroparks Zoo attracted approximately 77,000 visitors to Zoolights, and 2002’s festival surpassed that number. This, Allen said, is the key (or foil) to any winter festival. “It’s extremely weather dependent,” she said. Too warm, and guests aren’t in the proper winter spirit; too cold and no one wants to leave the house. The worst-case scenario for Zoolights? “Rain,” Allen said emphatically.

Cleveland Metroparks isn’t the only zoo that used wattage this past Christmas season. About a dozen facilities across the United States, including the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, the San Diego Zoo, the Phoenix Zoo, the Oakland Zoo, and the Oregon Zoo, featured a lights festival, most of them under the name “Zoolights.”

A Small-town Christmas
Hersheypark, Hershey, Pa.
November 8 to December 24,
December 25 to January 1

Hersheypark’s Kathy Burrows was enthusiastic about the park’s nineteenth season of winter operation. “We look forward to it,” she said. “For us, it’s our warmest season ever.”

Last year’s winter event was in keeping Hersheypark’s ethos of providing diverse entertainment for a reasonable price. There was a little of everything at Hershey: more than 24 pay-as-you-go rides, including a steam-driven locomotive, the Candyland Twilight Express; nine reindeer (live ones); festive food and drink; antique (1930s) window displays from Chicago; weekend sing-alongs; a cappella groups; and, according to Burrows, “more than one million lights” on trees and on rides.

Live entertainment included “A Music Box Christmas,” a retelling of The Night Before Christmas story, produced by Allen Albert Productions, and “Brightlights,” described as a “holiday musical laser spectacular,” which thrilled guests with the choreographed shooting of lasers.

There was also the “Food For Fun” program, where guests received ride tickets in exchange for canned food to be donated to the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank.

An Illuminated Christmas, Part II
“Winter Lights Drive-Thru Adventure”
Six Flags Great Adventure, Jackson, N.J.
November 5 to January 1

“For several years, we had considered a holiday event and we finally found one that met our goals,” said Six Flags’s Kristin Siebeneicher. “It was important to us that we offered a very family-oriented, high-quality event (yet inexpensive to our guests) as an avenue to both celebrate the holiday season and give back to our community.”

This event came in the form of “Winter Lights,” a two-and-a-half-mile drive-through holiday light show. It was Six Flags Great Adventure’s first stab at a winter festival, one that took more than 90 miles of steel and 80,000 hours to design and build.

Midwest Displays Inc. of Marion, Ind., created the animated visuals, which included religious-themed and comical displays; safari animals; a 96-foot-long rendering of park dolphins Sasha and Tamra; and a 75-foot-long display of Santa Claus hitting the surf at Hurricane Harbor’s Blue Lagoon wavepool (above) among other festive exhibits.

The event was advertised extensively on TV and radio, and in print. There was also a major couponing effort throughout the state, grassroots marketing, solicitation of sponsors, corporate and media promotions, and other public relations efforts. Said Siebeneicher, “We offered a special discount to our season pass holders and had a Winter Lights display at the park during October, our final month of [regular] park operation. We also gave out flyers to guests during Fright Fest [in October] and used banners to promote Winter Lights inside the theme park.”

The light show demanded a much smaller staff than Six Flags’s usual seasonal operations. Many of the park’s employees happily returned for the holiday season. As with most seasonal or special events, crowd management was a priority. “We were most concerned with traffic flow and guest safety,” said Siebeneicher. “We worked diligently to map and mark the route. We planned for ‘overflow’ queuing areas in case of large crowds.”

Six Flags also strived to keep Winter Lights’s bulbs burning as much as possible, against rain and snow, “as long as it didn’t inhibit guests’ safety along the drive,” said Siebeneicher. Since it was a drive-through event, one would think that this prospect would be much more manageable.All told, Winter Lights was the largest drive-through light show in the region, and one that partook of the charitable spirit of the season.

“We partnered with the Boys and Girls Clubs of New Jersey and donated a portion of each paid admission,” said Siebeneicher. “Plus, we ran a special promotion during opening week that the first 50 cars to bring five cans of food to feed the hungry received free admission. All other cars bringing five cans of food received $5 off their admission, and we partnered with the New Jersey State Police, offering holiday safety programs several times each week at our Holiday Village.”

The cans of food were donated to the Food Banks of Ocean and Monmouth Counties in New Jersey. With the success of its first winter opening, Siebeneicher said that Six Flags Great Adventure intends to make its Winter Lights an annual event.

A Haunted Christmas
“Haunted Mansion Holiday”
Disneyland Park,
Anaheim, Calif.
October 4 to January 5

With its usual corporate brio, Disney retooled one of its best-known attractions for the pre-Halloween through post-Christmas season without blinking an animatronic eye. “Haunted Mansion Holiday” combined images, characters, and music from Tim Burton’s cartoon-gothic film, The Nightmare Before Christmas, within the classic setting of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion.

“Haunted Mansion Holiday” featured Jack Skellington clad in his “Sandy Claws” outfit welcoming guests to the Mansion, which was decorated with an array of Hallo-Christmas props: hay stalks shaped like Christmas trees, a coffin sleigh, flickering candles, and grinning pumpkins along the Mansion’s balconies and rooftop.

Aboard “Doom Buggies,” guests were treated to many surprises: Madam Leota delivering a séance, the famous ballroom of dancing ghosts turned into a spirited Christmas Ball with oddball Christmas toys. Skellington and his dog, Zero, beckoned to guests from a snow-covered graveyard, complete with scary ghosts making merry and merry jack-o-lanterns making scary. Newly added this time around was a display of 13 giant packages revealing special treats, with one package opened during each of the 13 weeks leading up to Christmas, when the arrival of one of Skellington’s friends was finally revealed.

According to John McClintock, a spokesperson for Disney, the haunted holiday renovation was “a huge success.” “We received a lot of positive feedback and enthusiasm from our guests,” McClintock said.Also new in 2002 was an original score by Danny Elfman, If-Satan-had-a-marching-band. Elfman has provided the soundtrack for most of Burton’s movies, including The Nightmare Before Christmas and Batman. Disney also instituted the FASTPASS for the Haunted Mansion, during the Christmas season only, an option McClintock described as “tremendously popular.”

“There was also a great deal interest in Nightmare Before Christmas merchandise,” he said. “Everything from hats to limited-edition pins.”
Pastry chefs from the Disneyland Hotel prepared a 10-foot-tall “haunted gingerbread mansion,” the centerpiece of the Christmas Ball. Disney staff had to carry the massive confection down the Mansion’s narrow halls and stairways to its place in the ballroom. “Everything fit in through the passageways by inches,” said pastry chef Jean-Marc Viallet.

Ein Deutsches Weihnachten (A German Christmas)
Legoland Deutschland, Germany
November 9 to December 22, December 26 to January 1

This past year’s winter festivals weren’t solely confined to the United States. At the soon-to-be year-old Legoland Deutschland, guests were treated to a variety of snowy festivities.

Nearly all of the park’s attractions were open, including the shops, which were adorned with colorful holiday decorations.

According to Annette Uhlmann, a spokesperson for the park, many winter activities were offered at a reduced admission fee, including “a winter and Christmas-like decorated park. Kids [were also] invited to build their own Christmas ornaments out of Lego bricks (there are pre-built examples like snowmen, Christmas trees, and others that can easily be rebuilt),” she says. “These ornaments [were used] to decorate the big Christmas tree in the entrance part of the park.”

Regional children’s choirs visited Legoland to sing Christmas songs, and Coca-Cola sponsored events on December 14 and 15.

In Legoland’s restaurants, as well as in outdoor markets, special seasonal food was offered, such as Glühwein, punch, and waffles.