Every year during the holidays, downtown Hanford turns into a fantasy land known as Winter Wonderland.
It typically has ice skating, food and drink vendors and classic carnival games.
The fifth season was no different. Newly added was new food vendors, attractions, games and plenty of holiday magic.
Main events included annual Christmas tree lighting, the Hanford Christmas parade, which includes festive music, marching bands and dance crews, twinkling lights and dazzling floats and Santa Claus as well as an ice rink.
The prices for ice skating are $17 for adults, $16 for seniors/military, $10 for Youth (4-17), and the skate aid rental is $7. Youth prices were pretty fair for the amount of time you can ice skate for. One thing that should taken into consideration to be changed is the price for those with a military discount because it is only a dollar less.
The size of the ice rink made much more room for new rides/attractions but they should expand the ice skating rink. There are hundreds of people trying to ice skate every night but it so crowded that it takes forever to lap around the rink and/or to even get onto the ice rink. While bringing up the new attraction/rides, let’s talk about them. They were mainly accessible for children which is nice because not all of them feel comfortable ice skating, but everybody should be able to use them. The one new attraction that is accessible to everybody was the Ferris wheel. It is very pretty with all of the lights on it and it added the perfect touch to Winter Wonderland but if there were more accessible rides to the public, the ferries wheel wouldn’t have been so packed and the line wouldn’t have been so long.
Downtown Hanford did offer promotions at Winter Wonderland, one of them being every Tuesday everybody’s ticket was $8, which is nice.
There have been no complaints about the hours it was open. It was completely fair to everybody especially those who are attending school and working.
Overall, Winter Wonderland was definitely something to check out if you are ever in the Hanford area and want to make great holiday memories with your friends, family, and loved ones. If will most definetely be something worth going to again next holiday season.
