The most famous shuttered theme park in the country opens for a few select days each fall for fans to visit and take a journey through the magical Land of Oz during North Carolina’s only Wizard of Oz festival. Autumn at Oz, an annual event now in its 26th year, delivers as much enchantment as you can possibly imagine and is an experience anyone growing up watching “The Wizard of Oz” major motion picture will cherish.
The festival also gives those who visited the theme park between 1970 and when it closed in 1980 a chance to relive the memories made high atop Beech Mountain.
Back then, as it is now during Autumn at Oz, visitors could stroll on the yellow brick road in search of the Wizard, all the while encountering many of the beloved characters from the movie.
The annual festival begins long before you reach the gates to the Land of Oz. At last year's festival, there were vendors galore set up at the base of the ski lift at Beech Mountain Ski Resort.
Fortunately, as of this morning, there are still plenty of tickets for Autumn at Oz, but you'll want to get them asap to ensure you get your chance to lock arms with someone and skip along on the famous yellow brick road.
In this image taken at last year's event, while visitors waited for a chance to enter Dorothy's house, she and Toto wow'd the crowd with a song. The festival takes place over two upcoming weekends: September 6-8, and September 13-15, 2019.
Even though this event typically sells out, you may not feel like the park is overly crowded. The organizers do a fantastic job of staggering the entry times of all of the visitors.
And tickets this year have been released in tiers to ensure they didn't sell out all at once as in previous years.
I waited three years to get tickets before my journey through the Land of Oz during last year's festival and have to say it was a truly magical experience!
Autumn at Oz takes place over two weekend in September. The dates are September 6-8, 2019 and September 13-15, 2019. Tier 3 tickets are currently available and cost $55 for general admission. Learn more and see all ticket purchasing options (there are add-on VIP experiences for additional costs) from the official website for Autumn at Oz.
