Friday night our family visited Christmas Town at Busch Gardens in Tampa. This is the second year for the event but it was our first year attending. We went on opening night and crowds were very light. At times it felt like we had the whole park to ourselves.
Our first stop was Snow World presented by Coca-Cola. This is a 15,000 sq foot winter wonderland. There is an area for playing in the snow, riding snow slides and throwing snow (ice) balls at targets. My kids had a blast throwing the snowballs.
Next we wandered through Christmas Town Village, Poinsettia Parkway and the Enchanted Flamingo Valley.
The poinsettias and light displays were beautiful but this is where we started to run into the one big problem we noticed around the park, the fact that many walk ways are not lit well enough to walk comfortably. There were several very dark areas and we had to pull out our cell phones and use our flashlights to walk around.
We walked the beautiful Miracle Way and admired the nativity. Next we stopped at our favorite Busch Gardens eatery, The Zambia Smokehouse. Unfortunately the outdoor seating area is not lit and this is a photo I took of my dinner plate without using a flash…I told you it was dark. It is very difficult to eat barbecue and hold a cellphone/flashlight at the same time.
This is what we could see of our dinner in the dark at Christmas Town.
We enjoyed the Christmas Time Tree Show, especially after my son explained the technology behind turning a 40 ft Christmas Tree into a video wall. You want to stand back, away from the tree to get the full effect of this show.
We wandered through Holiday Hills on our way to the Christmas Town Sing-Along Train. I was excited because I like to sing, my kids didn’t want to ride with me, but they did. Unfortunately the sing-along host, Gary was a bit too over the top and most of the guests in our train car spent more time making jokes about him than they did singing. I think maybe this would be better if they had some additional hosts maybe one in every other train car to help get the riders more involved in the sing-along. We made a brief stop at Penguin Point on our way to ride Cheetah Hunt (with a zero minute wait). The kids rode twice and hubby even rode once. When the rides were finished we watched the Carol of the Bells show. We finished out our night with the Angels of Peace Ice Show.
The Mom Maven’s Thoughts on Christmas Town
This is a nice family friendly Christmas event that the entire family will love. The admission price is reasonable and there is plenty of time to see all the shows and ride your favorite Busch Gardens attractions. I do suggest you bring a small flashlight with you so that you can light up the walking paths, and your dinner plates! I hope to add Christmas Town to our growing list of family Christmas traditions.
Here are some fun facts about Christmas Town.
Disclosure: We were the guests of Busch Gardens for this event. All opinions are 100% mine or my family’s.
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