When Kelli Marsh helped launch Roc Holiday Village six years ago, she focused on one thing: how to use every inch of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park.
“One of the biggest things is just trying to squeeze so much fun into a space that really is limited,” she said. “The park is only so big, and we’ve got streets and structures all around us, so we’re always stretching ourselves to find new ways to fit more into that space.”
That space, when it opens for the season on Friday, Dec. 6, will hold a skating rink, a bar, a few dozen vendor huts, Santa’s workshop and more. Roc Holiday Village continues through Dec. 29 and will remain open past Christmas for the first time since 2019.
Marsh said that’s just the way the calendar worked out this year.
“Since Christmas is on a Wednesday and the Thanksgiving holiday was so late, if we closed before Christmas, it wouldn’t really give us the length of time that we wanted to be here,” she said.
The festival lights and décor of the winter wonderland are naturally geared toward children, as are storytimes with Anna and Elsa from Disney’s “Frozen.” Cozy igloo rentals, a popular winter hangout, are already booked up.
But Marsh said her team added more activities this year, like a boozy art class and live music, which are meant to get adults in the holiday spirit, too.
“The Gingerbread House is staying open a little later, and some nights we’re doing paint and sips,” she said. “We’re doing free holiday movie showings in there, and we’re doing trivia night in there. That’s something that we haven’t done before in that space. We’ll be bringing a bar in there also.”
It helps that this year, Roc Holiday Village is getting a bit more attention.
The festival was nominated for two Reader’s Choice Awards from “USA Today,” one for Best Ice Skating Rink and one for Best Holiday Market.
Marsh — who cofounded Roc Holiday Village in 2018 along with Jenna Manetta-Knauf and Sean McCarthy — said she hopes the accolades will help spread the word and expand the reach of the market.
“We do expect to see more (people) for the simple fact that we’ve grown every year,” she said. “I think that people are still learning about it, or they haven’t been able to come because it’s such a busy time of year, and so I know it’s still on people’s lists that haven’t been here before.”
The bump in visibility, she said, will hopefully encourage visitors from out of town to make the trek to downtown Rochester.
This year, the festival expects more than 185,000 people, which it saw in 2023.
More information on Roc Holiday Village available here.
Patrick Hosken is an arts reporter for CITY. He can be reached at patrick@rochester-citynews.com.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.
