Holiday Magic at Busch Gardens' Christmas Town
One of our favorite places to celebrate the holiday season is Busch Gardens Williamsburg, and we were thrilled to make our return to this award-winning park for Christmas Town 2024. The park boasts over 10 million twinkling lights on display, nearly a dozen live performances, character meets including the Big Man himself, all in addition to world-class rides and coasters. Last year, we spent Black Friday weekend at Christmas Town with a goal to see all the holiday entertainment and performances over two days. After running ourselves ragged, we learned that it’s just not practical to try and do it all…so this time, we were determined to prioritize how we celebrated our limited time at Christmas Town. We were also accompanied by Tim’s brother, Nate, for his first ever visit to Busch Gardens and wanted to make sure he had a great time as well. We gave ourselves the achievable goal of “3 shows and 1 ride” and would let the rest of our day play out without stress.
We arrived as close as we could to park open at noon and hopped on the skyway to France to save our feet a bit of walking. Our first stop was Les Frites to grab some poutine for lunch and catch the first performance of the “Merry Misfits.” It was 37⁰ F and dropping fast, so the warm fries really hit the spot. I thankfully remembered to bring my souvenir hot cocoa mug ($9.99), which gets you discounted refills of hot cocoa throughout the park. Next, we headed for Germany with the goal of getting on multi-launch roller coaster Verbolten, but we noticed along the way that the wait for the indoor attraction DarKoaster didn’t look too bad, so we decided to get in that queue first. After a modest 35-minute wait, we accomplished our first ride of the day. It was then time for Verbolten, which Tim and Nate were able to use our 1-time Quick Queue rewards to skip the line. Within two hours of being in the park, we already accomplished 1 show and 2 rides!
Our next must-see performance was the “Celtic Christmas Trio” in Ireland, so we made our way there about 20 minutes before the showtime to secure an excellent standing view. This show features three of Celtic Fyre’s world class Irish dancers in a fun and thrilling display themed to holiday music. By the time this performance wrapped, the sun was starting to set, and the 10 million lights were beginning to shine. During normal park operations, Busch Gardens has a locomotive that takes around the circumference of the park to 3 different locations, functioning primarily as transportation. However, during the holidays this train becomes the Christmas Town Express, completing a loop which starts and ends in New France and offers some of the best views of the Christmas lighting decorations, some of which can only be viewed as a train passenger. As you can imagine, this ride does get very popular after dark, so we typically purchase a 1-time Quick Queue to ensure we can make it on and off without spending too much of our limited time. This visit was no exception, and with quick queues in hand, we boarded the train just after dusk. This gave us plenty of time to enjoy the sights and sounds of the train before our next must-see show.
Our top priority was to finally see Busch’s legendary ice show, ‘Twas That Night, which features Olympic-tier skating in a multi-act, 24-minute spectacle. This performance takes over the large outdoor theater in France during the Christmas event and seating in first-come first-served. Except, if you happen to be on a VIP tour or pre-purchase reserved seating, of which we did the latter. We still arrived about 15 minutes before the show started and grabbed a great seat in the front/middle section. The story itself is adorable, but the ice skaters absolutely blew us away with their talent and grace. We could see why this show is so popular and were very glad we finally made the commitment to see it. After the ice-skating spectacle, we were starting to get tired and cold. The temperatures were dropping, and we noted that many rides such as Verbolten were now closed. We decided to watch the two light shows, O’Tannenbaum in Germany and Polar Pathway: Spectacle of Lights in Italy, and call it a good night.
On our way out of the park, we grabbed our member reward ornament which turned out to be an adorable blown-glass Clydesdale. We also had a surprise encounter with Father Christmas at the park exit, which absolutely made my night, because I was really sad when we passed his meeting spot and saw it was vacant. Though there’s simply no way to see and do everything in one day here at Christmas Town, we accomplished quite a bit in spite of the below-freezing temperatures! Christmas Town at Busch is our favorite way to ring in the holidays each year, and we were so glad to have been able to visit once again and bring a little bit of holiday magic back to you at home!
