MCCALL, Idaho — The annual McCall Winter Carnival will be celebrated on a shorter time-span in 2024. Instead of a two-weekend event in January, it's now being held during one 3-day weekend in February.
- The 2024 McCall Winter Carnival will be held February 23-25
- The celebration began in 1964
- Idaho News 6 will have live coverage of the parade on Saturday February 24
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
Cutting down on the celebration, good morning, I'm Roland Beres in McCall where the winter carnival has been cut down to just one weekend this year.
The McCall Winter Festival began in 1964 and has become a huge draw to the once sleepy little ski town.
But times have changed, McCall has grown, a lot. And turns out, two weeks of crowded streets is too much for some.
REBECCA BEST##EMPLOYEE, CHRISTMAS HOUSE "It's overwhelming how many people come up here for the weekends. Isn't that a good thing? It is a good thing, but then the locals tend not to come downtown during that time because of the traffic and parking because of all the traffic."
The chamber of commerce found when the carnival was canceled during covid, 82 percent of businesses saw no negative impact.
And 80 percent said winter business was up during the winter when there was no Carnival.
But some insist more foot traffic is generally a good thing.
ISABEL LOYDE##FRONT DESK AGENT, SUPER 8 I was kinda shocked a lot of the small business owners make quite a lot of money off of it."
KATIE HERNANDEZ##EMPLOYEE, MCCALL STORE I think it's good for the small businesses, just a little hard on actually finding the employees and everything for them; hiring is not easy? Yeah, Hiring is not easy."
Best agrees and says they can't do without extra help during carnival.
"they have to ramp up the number of people working the weekends because of sticky hands and loss of merchandise."
And just about every business in town has help wanted signs up even without Carnival.
So, if you want to see the fireworks and the snow sculptures, the Carnival runs from Feb. 23 to the 25th.
The winter carnival will remain one weekend through 2025 at which point city leaders will ree evaluate to see if changes need to be made.
