Christmas Wonderland at Gardens By The Bay to be ticketed this year

SINGAPORE — This year’s edition of Christmas Wonderland at Gardens By The Bay will be ticketed to manage the number of people who attend the event, event organisers Blue Sky Events announced on Thursday (Oct 27).

“In the first year we had 900,000 people, in the second year we jumped to 1.6 million people over the same period. While it was wonderful that the world embraced Christmas Wonderland, it was a very crowded experience,” said Sarah Martin, director of Blue Sky Events.

“It’s a pity because we do want people to maximize their experience at Christmas Wonderland, but it was a bit difficult for people last year. This year we are doing capacity control, we are only going to allow 30,000 people per day. And the only way to do it is to do it via a ticket model. This allows for people to really plan out what they would like to do and it allows them to actually do multiple things in a single day.”

Responding to queries on whether Christmas Wonderland was a profit-making venture, Martin declined to give exact figures, but said last year’s fair “did well”. She added that this year’s edition of Christmas Wonderland was a multi-million dollar project, and that the site has been expanded to 57,000sqm from last year’s 35,000sqm.

As in previous years, visitors to the fair will walk among Italian Luminarie, or sculptures of light handmade by craftsmen using white wood from the south of Italy. The popular Ice Palace will also return to the fair with an expanded Snow Playground, where visitors will get to play with real snow. There will also be a magical forest with more than 100 Christmas trees, a festive market, carnival games and festive performances such as Christmas carols.

In addition, fans of the Australian group Hi-5 can also look forward to the Hi-5 Funtastic House, which makes its debut in Singapore at Christmas Wonderland 2016. The fair will also feature the largest Luminarie ever built in South-east Asia. The Spalliera Castel del Monte stands at 19.8m tall and 24m wide, and is inspired by the 13th century castle in South-east Italy.

Christmas Wonderland 2016 will take place from Dec 2 to Jan 1 from 3.30pm to 11pm daily. Admission tickets to Christmas Wonderland 2016 start from S$4 and can only be purchased online at www.christmaswonderland.sg from Oct 28.

Each paying adult can bring in up to three children under 0.9m free of charge. Visitors must purchase their tickets prior to visiting the event, as tickets will not be available for sale on-site.

Additional charges for some attractions within the event grounds as well as to the conservatories apply. Selected capacity-controlled attractions will be available for pre-bookings online.