Raffle win makes Christmas 'magical' (+video)

Christmas has been made magical for one Rotorua family thanks to the Rotary Rotorua Sunrise club.

Club project manager Bob Gardner said this year's winner of the trailer load of stuff and the trailer itself, worth more than $4000, was 9-year-old Amanda Cartwright.

"She is absolutely over the moon, she's going to have a ball going through all that and finding all the great things," Mr Gardner said.

Amanda comes from a family of six. Her dad bought her a raffle ticket as a present and wrote her name on it.

"I'm excited and very joyful," she said.

Amanda said she wanted to share the trailer load, which included toys, food, a barbecue and body boards among other things, with her family because her siblings were excited too.

Amanda's mum, Carmen Cartwright, said it was a great surprise.

"I got the phone call and I was jumping for joy yelling 'I can't believe we won! We won!' It's exciting because we've not won anything before.

"It's just going to be a magical Christmas with winning that big trailer load of stuff and I think the kids are going to really love it and enjoy it and it will just be a fantastic Christmas for us."

It is the eighth year Rotary Rotorua Sunrise has run a Christmas raffle and every year the proceeds go to a local charity, this year's beneficiary is CanTeen.

"It's been very successful, we have probably raised about $6000 through the raffle," Mr Gardner said. "It's very popular and Pak'nSave has been really helpful by letting us park the trailer on their premises so we don't have any problems selling the tickets."