Kennywood's Holiday Lights festival has become a tradition throughout the region.
This is the fifth year the West Mifflin amusement park has hosted the winter festival of lights, rides and other seasonal activities. Starting today, park hours are 5 to 9 p.m. Friday through Sunday until Dec. 27, with the exception of Christmas, when the park is closed.
New this year for the festival is a 90-foot tall Christmas tree located near the entrance to Kiddieland.
It took three tractor-trailers to deliver the artificial conifer and about a week and a half for park employees to put the tree up, Kennywood spokesman Nick Paradise said.
The park contends the tree is the largest on record in Pennsylvania and Paradise said it's festooned with 250,000 LED lights and 7,500 ornaments.
That's all in addition to the more than 1 million lights and 12 miles of extension cords that were already being used for the festival.
“It kind of gets bigger and better every year,” Paradise said of the festival.
Setting up for the winter festival began right after the Halloween season's Phantom Fright Nights and the seasons comingle in the park's Ghostwood Estate attraction, which is more or less a funhouse on winter holiday.
“We say that Lord Kenneth Ghostwood doesn't know how to celebrate Christmas,” is how park operations manager Marie Ruby describes the attraction. The keeper of the haunted manor subsequently enlists his ghosts to decorate for the holiday and the holiday's traditions are subsequently turned on their ears.
For example, she said, visitors may notice the Christmas tree in the home is mounted upside-down.
“It's a little off and a little gaudy,” said Ruby.
Elsewhere in the park, trees are set up in a more traditional fashion. More than 50 live pines from the Indiana Tree Growers Association have been brought in for the festival.
The park's 4-D theater will be running a seasonal film short based on the holiday movie “The Polar Express.”
There will also be guests featured daily reading “The Night Before Christmas.” Kicking off the readings tonight is YouTube sensation Curt Wootton, who is better known as Pittsburgh Dad.
The park will go into its winter slumber when the holiday season ends but Paradise said planning will continue for the upcoming summer season. In 2016, the park plans to introduce a rebooted version of it Noah's Ark attraction. The funhouse, which was introduced in 1936, will be redesigned with the intent of recreating the experience of its original design, said Paradise.
Admission to Holiday Lights at the gate is $17.99, $15.99 for seniors 55 and older. Discount information is available on the park's website. Children 2 and younger are admitted free.
Eric Slagle is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-664-9161, ext. 1966, or eslagle@tribweb.com.
