Vancouver Winter Wonderland

PNE show-​mart mixed with a half assed attempt at seasonal flair. Children will leave sad and parent angry, this «event» truly is an insult to Christmas.

Absolutely awful. Took the kids. Will never do that again. It’s great if you ard looking for a place to spend alot of money and walk out with almost nothing. Seems so fun on the ads. Pay to get in. that I expected. I also kind if expected some things ghat would be covered by admission cost. such as the bouncy castle slide. Nope. that was $ 5 for 3 quick trips down the 10′ slide. 2 or 3 little free crafts for the kids. Other than that over priced food, typical PNE games, bored after 30 minutes.
I had to stay for a performance I was in. So my wife took the kids home early so they could go home and have some fun.
3 story high snow globe you can go in! cool! except you walk into it so you can have a picture taken and then you can buy the picture for 5 or 10 bucks. Not fun. Just a cash grab. found out its organized by Wun2free entertainment. Same company that runs just the games at Richmond night market. My bad for not doing research. I am not surprised by all of the negative reviews. NEVER GP unless you are kid free and like to browse around for stuff to buy.
By the way. This is the first review I’ve ever written on Unilocal.Never been so compelled to write one before.

Awful awful awful. This seemed very much like the marketplace during the PNE. Very few things were seasonal or even interesting. The food trucks outside were meh.
If you don’t provide indoor eating spaces during the winter, then please put out some heat lamps in the lousy eating spaces outside.
Speaking to some of the vendors, they were all very disappointed with how this was handled. They were sold a very different event than what was put on.
We did buy a couple of scarves from one of the crafty vendors and we did leave with a couple of cannolis from Cannoli King (which were delicious by the way).
Whole thing took about half an hour to go through.
Will not be back… ever.

I rarely give out 1 star reviews but I just want to let others know don’t waste your money and time to go to this festival. Don’t forget that parking their would cost you $ 10.00. I live close by so I just walked over. I had high hopes due to their cute advertisement.
I purchased the tickets off Groupon for 5.00 for 2 people. I thought I pretty much got a bargain considering it’s like 11.00 for 2 people on Groupon for the German Christmas Market in Downtown. But now that I’ve been to this one I still think the German Christmas Market is more worth it.
The entrance of this festival was pretty professional I would say. They prepared themselves for a lot of people by putting up things to form a line. But … once you walk in, it was pretty much a night market that is indoors or their market that they have during PNE time. As we walked around we noticed they placed up cute things for you to take photos at such as the blow up snow globe, santa and the snow bear at the far end. Those were pretty cute and correspond to their advertisement. But they charge like 5.00 a picture or 3 for 10.00 i think. It totally attracts the people with kids to do it. The stands that were selling stuff wasn’t festival at all I felt. There may have been a few handcraft stands and that was about it. None of the stands were really lively. The food trucks were all outside the parking lot and even the food wasn’t festival either. The food trucks were the ones you can find in downtown or something. They also had games that they pulled from their outdoor PNE such as pop the balloon and win a prize. There were also performance throughout the day but it was pretty meh. Koodos to the Notre Dame kids who sang during the time when I went.
Overall, their marketing department did a good job advertising the event but it didn’t really correspond to how it really turned out. I expected it to be a more festival kind of place and for it to have more cute things. If they plan on doing this again next year, I suggest they re-​evaluate all of their vendors and so forth. Make it more festival like spitting out some fake snow once again indoors. Make the place feel like a winter wonderland.

Complete waste of time and money. I secretly expected this to be a disappointment considering how over hyped this event was all over the media. Worse than the Halloween Expo.
The admission was $ 5 but the fair was hardly worth that. Things that made this disappointing:
1. Very few vendors, almost more than half, had nothing to do with Christmas. I talked to a lot of the vendors cause the foot traffic was so bad that openly admitted to me through candid conversation that they were oversold on the event and that they were charged way too much for a booth.
2. Website doesn’t tell you who is vendoring or what activities are being presented, therefore, you’re going in completely blind which seems like a red flag in itself.
3. Extra charge for all the Children’s activities.
4. Way too many corporate vendors and no fun vendors.
5. VancityBuzz got overly compensated to plug this event that I am sure they admit deep down inside was a bust before it began.
6. Finished the thing in under 30 minutes and walked out with no purchases and or smiles. They bus ride getting there was livelier.

Quite underwhelming. Was expecting festive atmosphere and seasonal shopping booths. The place felt flat. Vendors were 90% the same as the standard vendors found at the night market in summer. Took less than 20 minutes to see everything.
Cost 5 $ to get in, 10 $ to park. The lineup was held up for several minutes upon opening without explanation. Didn’t buy anything inside.
Perhaps with better organization it could be better next year. The space has a lot of potential. A few of the vendors inside had nice jewelry and Christmas gift type products.
The giant snow globe bear is a cute idea.

Variety Club fundraiser disguised as a winter shopping event.
I have to pay to shop?
Winter stuff is décor and kid activities which you have to pay/​donate for. Plus a few Christmas /​Festive season merchants hidden among the mass of generic merchants, including a sports car rental service squarely in the middle.
Food carts are outside in the rain and cold. Yay.
TIP:
— Telus has a booth where they take your photo and put it on wrapping paper. FREE.
— Look for the free hot chocolate near the entrance. Yay it’s free. Boo it’s wimpy and weak on chocolate flavour. Yay it’s hot. Get one on your way in and on your way out.
TIP:
Try to get discount admittance from SocialShopper coupons.