Six Flags Magic Mountain opened their huge Holiday in the Park event for the season and this year we find two new themed areas, a new show and an awesome Virtual Reality experience on The New Revolution. The Holiday event features one of the West Coast’s largest light shows, millions of lights, limited-time-only food, characters, and all your favorite coasters, of course.
Holiday Square
Let’s start with the front of the park! Holiday Square spans from the entrance to the Snowy Nights section of the event (Full Throttle Plaza) and to Santa’s Star Spangled Plaza (The New Revolution). Here’s the Hanukkah dedicated section of Holiday Square. 
The Looney Tunes Super Store has a basic but slick light package. 
The main entrance plaza is filled with colorful lights, looney tunes characters and snow!
The Valencia Falls feature a giant christmas tree of water, which changes colors and has several external search lights interact with it. In addition, the rocks of the waterfall in the background have a matching color pattern that changes as well. 
Winter Wonderland
Let’s move on to a very interactive area of the event, Winter Wonderland. You may know this area from past years, but they’ve changed up the lighting quite a bit. The first half of the area is completely decked in white lights. 
Of course the snow structures have returned as well! This year a multitude of holiday characters are to be found in the area that guests can take pictures with. 
Like many of the park’s areas there’s a bunch of faux snow to be found in this area! Combine that with the all-white lighting and the snow sculptures and it really creates a cool atmosphere in the area! 
The second half of the area is dedicated to Santa’s Workshop and features and extravagant candy cane light installment.
Santa’s Workshop features several activities including meet ‘n greets with Santa and Mrs. Claus and cookie decorating.
Katy’s Kettle has been transformed into Mrs. Claus’ Kitchen with specialty Holiday foods for the event. 
Guests can also warm up and make s’mores in the area, as the park placed a very nice fire-pit for the event! 
Or guests can get warmed up by the fire-breathing beast from the far far East… TATSU! 
Snowy Nights
The next area we’ll be discussing is a high-energy one! Snowy Nights is the Holiday in the Park version of Full Throttle Nights! And features a live band as well as a DJ and dancers!
It’s one of the more modern themed areas, complimenting Full Throttle. 
This is one of the areas that features projection mapping, which is projected onto the front of the Full Throttle Sports Bar. 
These guys and their choreography bring the real action to the area. 
Rockin’ Universe
Another high-energy themed area is Rockin’ Universe that features one of the West Coast’s largest synchronized light shows! All buildings throughout the DC Universe section of the park are decked in lights that are synchronized, and the park currently features three different light shows, displaying every 15 minutes! 
Gleampunk District
New this year is the Gleampunk District, which is the popular Screampunk District area of the park that houses Scream! and Twisted Colossus. Here’s the impressive entrance to the even more impressive area. 
I absolutely fell in love with this area and am not even sure what to start writing about it, so let’s start with the very first element of the area, which is the sleigh and the reindeer photo op! (Yes! You can pass under the reindeer to enter the rest of the area!).
Moving on to the rest of the area, which is very large, we find a very solid mix between colors and lighting that made this area stand out so much. There’s endless yellow ground lights that create a sparkling effect surrounding the steam-punk themed elements. All the trees and higher elevated structures are green and blue (Twisted Colossus colors) and it turned into a perfectly balanced area. It looks amazing. 
Speaking of themed elements, there are quite a few special Gleampunk themed elements in the area, most of which have a bunch of moving parts, adding to the amazingness of this area. 
This area has a very unique theme, and it sure is hard to pull that off correctly, but the direction in which the park went turned out perfect for them! 
As if it couldn’t get any better, the area also features amazing projection mapping all along the outsides of the Gearworks Theatre! 
The light package on the Twisted Colossus station is on point as well and perfectly matches the ride and the rest of the area. Overall, Gleampunk District may just be my favorite area at the event, it’s large, has a perfect light installation, has faux snow, projection mapping, and features a great show. 
Kwerkmas
That great show is Kwerkmas, the Holiday in the Park version of the park’s acrobatics show: Kwerk. 
The show is quite different from the version you may have seen this summer, and features more acrobatics, a magic show section, and bunch of little holiday touches! The show runs daily during the event at 2:00 PM, 3:30 PM, 5:30 PM, and 7:00 PM. Make sure to check it out! 
Santa’s Star Spangled Plaza
Last but not least is the park’s second new area for their Holiday in the Park event! The all-American themed Santa’s Star Spangled Plaza compliments The New Revolution which features the Santa’s Wild Sleigh Ride Virtual Reality. The area is a tad small, but features toy soldiers, a christmas tree, and a crazy amount of lights! 
Santa’s Wild Sleigh Ride
And of course it features the new VR installment on the ride! The new upgraded VR has been created in cooperation with the Hallmark Channel and takes guests on a sleigh ride with Santa. It’s definitely something different, and that’s a good thing. I was amazed by how fun this VR installment is. 
The VR is of better quality than the previous installment, guests get to shoot at the elf with their snowballs all ride long using the button on the right side of their headset. The experience overall feels very natural and the first drop is amazing in the VR setting, make sure to check it out! And to end it this post on a nerd-note, The New Revolution features a special Holiday in the Park light package 🙂 😀
Thanks for checking out this overview of Holiday in the Park at Six Flags Magic Mountain! Make sure to check it out this winter! The event runs through January 1st of 2017. We’ll have Knott’s Merry Farm, California’s Great America WinterFest, Six Flags Discovery Kingdom Holiday in the Park, Grinchmas, and SeaWorld’s Christmas Celebration coverage on California Coaster Kings in the near future!
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