Yesterday was the official opening of Winter Wonderland and I was lucky enough to get tickets when they first went on sale. I ended up passing last night and it wasn’t what I was expecting, mostly in a good way.
I parked a full block down from Winter Wonderland and decided to walk the rest of the way because I was expecting crazy traffic. It was opening day and tickets were sold out so I was pretty surprised when I got to the Winter Wonderland street and realized there wasn’t any traffic and parking was available.
The second surprise was the lack of a queue to get into the park. There were two gates, the first gate checks to see if you have a ticket and for the correct date, then the second gate is a metal detector which once you go through, staff on the other side scan your QR code.
Once inside, the park also felt empty. I was there around 6:30-7:00 PM and it didn’t feel busy at all. I think because the area of the park is huge and the few rides they have are spread out, the place didn’t feel crowded at all. A lot of rides, especially the ones further out from the center were empty while some, mostly the interesting ones had queues. I kinda wish they had squeezed Winter Wonderland into an area half the size so it would feel cozier and busier.
The whole thing was really organized with lots of staff around in case you needed anything as well as lots of cops everywhere (both inside and outside the park). Tickets for December are already sold out so if you’re interested in going, the earliest tickets are for January. Booking is through winterland.kw
