HoliWood Nights 2023 tickets on sale 12/6/22

Just a quick heads up, according to the official HoliWood Nights page, tickets go on sale TOMORROW, 12/6, at 11am Central.

Here is another post with more specifications. You can buy up to 4 tickets per transaction.

https://www.holidayworld.com/holiblog/2022/11/30/holiwood-nights-20...vOrwKpW4GY

I see this being a case of a fast sell out followed by a series of "your system is rigged" tweets at 11:05am.

A friend tried to buy at 12:51 EST...sold out.

I got one for myself.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

BrettV:

I see this being a case of a fast sell out followed by a series of "your system is rigged" tweets at 11:05am.

Big surprise... that looks like the case, and the Facebook Admin had to pause the group. Though in all fairness it looks like the typical Accesso issues. Sounds like it was sold out almost immediately.

I last went to this event maybe 4 years ago (Caddyshack theme, and Paula's last year) and thought it was sparsely attended. Voyage line never was beyond the bottom of the stairs, and we stayed on Raven in the front seat for maybe 4-5 laps in a row by ourselves until a thunderstorm booted us out. This is still when there was no cap on tickets, and you could walk up same day and get in (plus "procrastination fee" of course ;) )

It's crazy that the event grew exponentially during the pandemic that they have to limit it now (queue the Revenge Travel thread). I saw people complaining about long lines in 2021, but I remember a pretty hefty crowds and decent waits for the restarting/rebrand of the event when Voyage first opened and still thought it was an awesome event. In the SRM days when they only had 1 train on Raven waits could get long then , but a few laps in the dark is a treat enough. Of course there is no pleasing the enthusiast, it's either too crowded or now you cant get tickets.

Kudos to Holiday World for continually hosting one of the best events of the year. When I attempted (6 times) to get tickets yesterday, I could have swore the price is way higher than it used to be - also a sign of success, and quality. Maybe they'll add another weekend or something, it's smart to limit the crowd.

I doubt it. The parks really don't need these events and it's pretty well documented how poor guest behavior tends to be. You may have some social media "outrage" for a few days, but at the end of the day it's just the enthusiast version of getting Taylor Swift tickets.

That Holiday World holds any enthusiast event at all since the accident is surprising. Parks definitely don't need us.

The price for Holiwood nights was actually increased to $125 last year and $140 this year. I forget what it was before, but it was last year that the event price went to triple digits. Also last year they offered a discounted rate ($80) for season pass holders; that's gone this year. And they still sold out in ten minutes.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

22 minutes and no "Holiday World hates poor people?" comment? I'm so disappointed.

Everything’s going up.
The price of fudge these days…

But the price of fur’s real good.

I ran into some issues like others when it came to payment, once I got to the cart. I normally just put Chris Ryan in my name field with my credit card instead of my full name and most everywhere takes it. Well, it threw an error when I did that, but still charged my card and kicked me back into the cart. I then changed it to Christopher and submitted it again, and it worked. It was odd, like my credit card company took the information and charged me but the site was like nope!

I think the 15-minute hold time also confused people. After entering the promo code and selecting the number of tickets, you were directed to a screen to input the information of each guest. Well, the tickets weren't in your cart yet. After people got to that screen, I suspect they did not enter people's information quickly enough and that's why there weren't any tickets to grab when they clicked submit. As a result, they received an error message telling them that they were sold out and would have to re-provide their information again to try and get tickets that were thrown back into the pool.

I also think 2021 was like a perfect storm to create that overcrowding situation they had at Voyage for the Saturday ERT. Thunderbird was down that weekend and Voyage closed early on Friday due to the unfortunate death. So everyone that was attending went straight for Voyage at the beginning of ERT.

I don't understand why everyone uses Accesso, other than the fact that it apparently has no competitors that work at scale (well, clearly they can't scale either).

The only competitor I can think of is Convious. They haven't really broken into to U.S. market, but many European parks are using them.

I read that as Coronavirus at first. What an unfortunate company name.

I guess it's a good thing we can't get there anymore. It would suck after attending so many years and then not be able to because of so many non-members getting in. IMO - forget the cap. If people are willing to fight the crowds, let them come. If they don't like it, no one is forcing them to go. Sure, I would hate the lines, but being there with coaster family would be the big perk for me. We haven't been to a park in over 7 years now. We really miss seeing our coaster family! Sad that the last two trips to Ohio have been for funerals. We were thrilled to get to hang out with Chris R while there!

It turns out the park is open a few other days during the year.

How busy had it gotten? I went several years ago, maybe 2004 or 2005. The pavilion was pretty full during the pre-ERT festivities. The line for Voyage was fairly long for the first few rides but then it seemed like everyone decided to quit riding and just hang out. Got lots of re-rides before I decided to head over to Legend to be greeted by an empty queue. I promptly parked my butt in a seat and never left until the night was over.

It was fairly busy, but events are always about the experience of being with friends and spending one around hobby we enjoy.

The riding aspect is nice, and the last few years before 2022 (lottery year, didn’t get picked) were fine for me. Voyage line was long-ish, but I spent time talking with friends, spotting people I hadn’t seen in forever in the queue, and generally just enjoying the whole thing.

The last half of the night, I parked on Legend and didn’t move for several rides in a row, and then we would head back to the cabin for a fire and some whiskey.

The reality, for me, is that the whole thing is the “event” and the amount of rides just doesn’t matter, so long as there’s an opportunity to grab a few.