Carowinds, a Six Flags park in Charlotte, North Carolina just recently released their hours of operation for the popular Christmas event, WinterFest. Featuring millions of Christmas and holiday decorations and lights, WinterFest is a popular local Holiday event to get everyone in the spirit of Christmas. Previously, their WinterFest hours were 5-10 PM. Now, they have changed the hours to 11AM to 7PM. Most fans are upset about this as it gives them less dark hours to enjoy the festive lights and decorations, but some are happy as they have added Thunder Striker (Formerly Intimidator), the B&M hyper to their lineup of rides operational during WinterFest. Fury 325 and Copperhead Strike have been on that list since 2022.
The main thing fans loved about WinterFest was seeing all of the holiday and Christmas decorations and magic at night, but as the sunset in Charlotte in December is around 5:15 PM, meaning that it gets darker around 5:45. This only gives visitors 2 hours to experience the magic of the nighttime lights during WinterFest. Night rides on Fury 325 during WinterFest are very popular as you can look out at the rest of the park and enjoy the lights. Night rides on Fury 325 will now not be as frequent and only offered for 2 hours per night. That does seem like a lot, but when you factor in the line it could potentially have as Fury 325 only runs 2 trains during WinterFest, any other things you want to do at night, and the food and drink lines, it’s not a lot of time.
While the lack of nighttime hours is not great, I do like these new changes as it allows them to add more rides, like Thunder Striker to the WinterFest list. And if anyone doesn’t like Carowinds’ WinterFest hours, Go look at Kings Dominion! They don’t even have a WinterFest anymore!