Speedway Christmas Lights Winterfest Christmas Village at the Charlotte Motor Speedway — Local services in Concord

I'm pleasantly surprised! I went into this Christmas festival with a pessimistic mindset, because of some of the negative reviews stating it wasn't a good light show. My boyfriend has been wanting to try this light show festival for a few years now because it's at the race track and he's a race car fan. So, for him, I planned a family trip here to try it out ONCE (so I thought) thinking it'd be lame and not worth the money or time. I'm happy to report I was wrong.

Where I do appreciate and respect other people's opinions saying this light show wasn't the best, we a family of 7 ranging in ages 8 yrs to 40 yrs old thought it was an amazing experience and a pretty good light show. The lights were synchronized to the music station they have you turn to when you enter the light show. This light show wasn't at all disappointing as I had thought it'd be going in. I do feel there could have been more lights, they seemed spaced out at times, and spots were dark but there was still a lot of lights to drive through.

The cost for general admission is a little high at $45 for general admission. I do feel the proper price point for the quality of the event should've been a bit lower. We also bought our tickets online and paid an extra $7 charge with a total of $52 for general admission, because I thought you had to buy them online, but you can pay at the ticket booth driving in as well. Paying at the booth would've saved us a little money, time, and stress trying to find the PDF file with our QR code ticket at the bottom of our emailed confirmation to get in. The instructions to whether you have to show a confirmation code, printed ticket, etc. in the emailed confirmation they send you after you pay are not clear. Would've been nice if they'd added on the email confirmation instructions to download the PDF file attached to that email that had the QR code ticket (which we did not know) and present the QR code ticket at the ticket booth upon entering. We were under the impression we just had to show the confirmation email number because it said nothing further regarding the ticket. Minor inconvenience, but hopefully it'll help someone else not make the same mistake as we did.

Continuing on, there's a good bit of lights to see, they have a village area that is decent size with food and vendors. The village does have actual restrooms inside and they were clean. Inside the village our children ranging from 8yrs old to 18yrs old enjoyed taking pictures with the Christmas decorations and doing the multiple mini mazes they had, plus a beautiful small light trail. They have pictures with Santa, you do have to pay for them but they were respectfully priced. They cost less than the pictures I had paid to have done at the mall by a good bit and you had a Santa and Mrs. Clause to take photos with. They have a food area that has the most adorable singing reindeer! That was my personal favorite. As well as bon fire pits and tables to sit and eat with the family. There was outside of the village a huge drive in screen to sit and watch a Christmas movie in your vehicle with your family. On the way out of the village there was a slide trail by cookout that could've been done but we didn't stop for that activity as our children were cold from walking the village and were ready to finish the lights and head home.

We got in line early being it was a Saturday, they recommended going on a week day because weekends are the busiest but with my boyfriends work schedule that wasn't possible for us. They started to let us, in general admission, in at 6pm. Those who paid extra for fast lane went in first. Doing all the lights and exploring the village was a total of an hour and a half event for us from start to finish. That's a good bit of time enjoying a Christmas festival, longer than others we've explored. The line leaving was super long! All the way out to the main road and the traffic screen there was showing a 3+ hour wait from that point and that was at 7:45pm. So I highly recommend to try to get there early and be prepared to...

I read the reviews before we went to the Christmas lights show at the speedway. I almost didn’t go because of all the reviews about the terrible waits and lines. My husband still wanted to check it out for our toddler. Because of the reviews, we decided to arrive at 5:30pm on a Thursday evening (they open at 6pm). There was already a line of cars leading from the entrance to the ticket booths. Once they opened the entrance at 6pm, the line moved at a decent rate. We made it to the lights entrance from the ticket booths at 6:10pm. Our toddler absolutely loved all the Christmas lights.

There are signs that say slow cars keep right and the faster lane on the left. Most of the time we drove through the left lane because we didn’t care to go any slower. But there were moments when other drivers didn’t care and they would drive right in the middle of the path and not allow any room to drive in the left lane.

We stopped at the Christmas village. There were barely any people when we first arrived at the village. The apple cider donuts and apple cider drinks were so yummy from food truck lane. We checked out the ice maze and it was cute to see our toddler play through it. They also have Christmas lights where you can take pictures with a train, gingerbread house, tunnel, snowman, etc. Our toddler loved it. We didn’t stop at any vendor shops. We just went wherever our almost 3 year old wanted to go.

Once we started leaving the Christmas village, there were more cars and more people coming in. We managed to get out within a few minutes. I noticed the movie parking was also getting a few rows built up (when we arrived at the village there were only a few cars parked for the movie).

Once we drove through the rest of Christmas lights show, we reached the speedway exit at 7:27pm. It wasn’t bad at all. We really enjoyed our time because our toddler had a great time. The price was $45, and we did the standard vehicle pass. We paid at the ticket booth because I read another review that said they had to pay a $7 fee for the online ticket purchase. I’d still recommend to go but only if you...

I would suggest speedway to put the movie out therein the 12 lanes of waiting to see the lights. Also someone couldve been walking around like the racetrack selling hot chocolate and food because we were all starving with4 children . And do better speedway the sign said1.5 hours when in fact we waited over 3.5 hours. We got off the road as soon as we got there and we thought oh wow it’s not that busy little did we know the surprise they had hidden for us to wait in . People were fighting in the 12 lanes of Christmas and there was people hitting bumpers and leaving through the emergency exits after going through 4 lanes of Christmas . Just so y’all know if you want to save 5 dollars bring a coke product 👍🏼 … . I would suggest Christmas village to be closer too bc even after the lights between rows of cars with head lights on all over the place we still had to wait over an hour in very slow traffic to get to a decent bathroom and not a porta potty and food . The kids were also pretty sad they didn’t even get to see a clip of the Christmas movie.. why couldn’t y’all have started that back over?? It was an experience to remember and will be talked and laughed about for years to come. I have to say that at 1100pm I expected the village to be closed but it wasn’t and didn’t close while we were there so that was good so...