After many years of hearing about The Glenarm Castle Christmas Experience we finally bagged ourselves some tickets this year and took our 2 boys – Max 5 and Alex 4 – to meet Santa.
From the minute you arrive and are shown into the ticket office, with full-size sleigh and reindeer, full-size teddies and candy canes, it’s obvious that this is an instagrammers paradise. No expense seems to have been spared, and this really is a premium experience.
That’s not to say that you don’t get a lot for your money, however (£20 children, £18 adults) – your ticket includes access to rides, polar express train, Santa’s workshop, meeting Santa, photos, toys, food and drink and even a Storytime with Mrs. Clause followed by some gingerbread men. In fact, the only other thing we bought was a couple of hot chocolates.
We headed straight to Santa’s workshop where the boys filled in lists and posted them, before playing on the interactive floor mat and with all the other toys.
The room is decorated brilliantly with toys everywhere, a toy train doing loops and even a massive projection of the toys being made. From here we were escorted by elves in to see (real beard) Santa 1-on-1 in his wee house and have a chat with the big man, he knew their names and said he was sure they were on the nice list, before leaving with some printed photos and some presents.
Next up was the Polar Express as we boarded to the calls of “tickets please, all aboard” that whizzed us around the grounds to see the beautiful lights and projections, some polar bears and even Santa’s sleigh and landing strip.
After a few goes on the roundabout we went to get our food, hot dogs and home-made soup followed by biscuits and coffee went down a treat and was well received because we’d forgot to have dinner!
Another couple of goes on the roundabout and some hot chocolate took us to our storytime with Mrs. Clause in her cozy wee room before the boys decorated their own gingerbread men to various degrees of accuracy. Wonky decorations, however, didn’t stop them from having them ate by the time we reached the car.
Nearly 2 hours after we arrived, we set off home and it wasn’t long before the sounds of snoring emanated from the back of the car as they both fell asleep clutching their presents from Santa.
