Despite the weather, about 3000 Ballarat residents took advantage of Sovereign Hill's one-night-only offer of discounted tickets for locals to launch the three-week festival.

While interstate and international visitors are unable to experience the return of Winter Wonderlights, Sovereign Hill chief executive Sara Quon estimated it would see about half of its normal visitation, which can reach up to 95,000.

"We'd expect that between 70 and 80 per cent of our visitors will be from metro Melbourne and then the balance from regional Victoria," she said.

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"Regional Victoria has been hugely supportive of Sovereign Hill throughout COVID and we're excited to welcome both metro and regional visitors back to Sovereign Hill."

See our gallery of photos from Winter Wonderlights below.

Ms Quon said it had been a challenging 18 months for Sovereign Hill.

"I think what our real focus has been on is adapting and ensuring our staff, our volunteers, the community are safe and when we're able to reopen each time, they've got somewhere to come and enjoy and spend time together," she said.

"That adaptation each time the restrictions have eased and changed has been something our team's got really good at.

"It's been an incredible challenge, but we're really proud of what we've done through this time to make sure that an event like this is able to come off still."

While Winter Wonderlights might look familiar to frequent visitors with classic projections, there have been some tweaks with more fairy lights strung across the 30,000 square metre site than ever before and the diggings opened during the evening.

Deputy chief executive Katrina Nitschke said the event brought Ballarat winter to life.

"We've brought some of our old projections back that people have loved before but we also got some new projections, new illuminations, bringing the story to life a little more strongly," she said.

"We've opened up our diggings in the evening, the sound, the cacophony of a goldfields diggings, noises shouted across the creek really comes to life in the dark.

"We've got fairy floss that's got neon lights within it so kids can run around in the dark, we've Saint Nicholas in the diggings, we've got mulled wine, hot chocolate, gingerbread, German market stalls, we've got people buying their Christmas decorations early.

"Having this extraordinary experience of a true winter in Ballarat brought to life with these lights, it's just so much fun."

Ms Quon said the local support on opening night had been greater than expected.

"It's great to see that support and much higher than our expectations were for opening night," she said.

"We find Ballarat locals often book late, look at what's happening on the day, so we're really hopeful that we'll have strong support from Ballarat throughout the next few days and few weeks."

Tickets are available at winterwonderlights.sovereignhill.com.au.

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