The Wonder of Santaland at Wookey Hole.

Just over a week ago, Ross, Grace and I were invited to Wookey Hole on 7th December to pay a visit to Santaland and the man in red himself. Having faced the crowds last year at London Zoo, I was interested to see how Wookey Hole presented their festivities over the Christmas period.

I haven’t been to Wookey Hole since I was in my late teens and Ross and Grace had never been so I was excited for them to see just what lay in store.  We booked to visit Santa at 12pm – and, in fact, the ticket allowed you access between 12 and 1 which helped to even out the queues and meant that there weren’t huge numbers of people everywhere. In fact, I don’t believe that we had to queue any more than 15 minutes at any of the places we visited within Wookey Hole that day.

After parking the car (which, I must add, was FREE!), we presented our form at the booking office and collected our tickets and stickers which gave our entry into all areas. This included a visit to Santa, the Circus (shows were at 1pm and 3pm), the caves, the 8D Sleigh Ride, the Pirate Crazy Golf, the dinosaur exhibition and soft play. All of this at a great price of £14 each! You were also able to book and pay extra to have a Christmas dinner in their spacious restaurant which we decided not to opt for seeing as we had a chicken in the slow cooker at home.

Walking towards Wookey Hole, the Santaland experience wasn’t that well sign-posted and we lost our way a little but when we got there, we were pleased to see 4 of Santa’s reindeer outside. There was also a nativity scene and plenty of festive decorations. We entered towards the rear of the restaurant and joined a small queue to see Santa Claus.

An Elf took our tickets and we were guided into the grotto to make our way through a winter wonderland scene of animals and beautiful lights. Grace had brought with her her Christmas List and a drawing that she had done for Santa.

As we rounded the corner to see Santa, another Elf greeted us and we took Grace’s photo with her.After posting her Christmas wishlist, we were shown in to see the man himself.

Grace was a little shy. She asked for a NERF gun(!) and a bicycle helmet. Then she presented him with her drawing. I was really impressed that we were allowed to take our own photos as well as have the ‘official’ one taken by them. We had the option to choose this and pay for it (prices were fairly standard from what I could see) but we were happy with the ones we had taken. Grace was presented with a beautifully wrapped gift from Santa. We agreed that Grace may open it so we went into a quiet area and sat down. She was thrilled! It was a lovely doll complete with accessories. Certainly the best present I have come across following a visit to Santa.

As it was almost time for the Circus to start, we decided to nip over the road and purchase an ice cream from their special ice cream parlour. Grace chose coffee flavour, I opted for chocolate brownie and Ross decided on white chocolate. We then made our way back with our ice creams to find some seats, ready to watch the Circus performance – and what a show it was!

Wookey Hole have their own circus school and all of the children performing were a part of this. There was juggling, acrobatics, laughs, magic, the works! We absolutely loved it. And, at 45 minutes, it was perfectly timed. Long enough to enjoy without the children getting to the point where they started to fidget!

We then decided to make our way to the caves. Which meant it was time for Ross and Grace to learn all about the witch of Wookey. We joined a queue of around 25 other people, this included a number of small children. After a 10 minute wait and following a short safety talk, our guide, Paul, showed us into the caves. Grace was a little scared to start with (it probably didn’t help that Ross told her that we were going into the mines of moria!) but once the witch and her dog were out of the way, she was able to appreciate the beauty of the caves. Paul was excellent. He explained the caves and gave us plenty of facts and figures. What I would say is that children under the age of 4 probably won’t benefit from this tour. They got bored and at times it was rather tricky to hear what our guide was saying. Paul was also very attentive and helped everyone through the caves, warning them of potential dangers as we made our way through the tour. We were impressed.

Upon exiting the caves, we found ourselves in the land of the dinosaurs and King Kong himself greeted us! We then had a small wait before making our way into the cinema to see the 8D Sleigh Ride so we decided to do a bit of fossil digging!

I wasn’t able to take photos of the Sleigh Ride – although you can get a good idea of what it was like from the video below. It was fabulous! We had 3D glasses, the seats moved in time with the film, giving you the impression you were on the sleigh with the Elf and then, as things got thrown at us, we felt the water!

Once the film had finished, we realised that time was pushing on (it was around 4pm) so we decided to leave the crazy golf for another day and make our way to the gift shop. Grace had received some pocket money from her Granny during the week so we knew exactly what she would be heading for – the crystals and precious stones! She chose 3 precious rocks and a pouch full of small semi-precious stones (which I felt was very reasonable at £2.45). She paid with her £10 and came away with change.

All in all, we had a wonderful day out at Santaland. There were no big queues or crowds, meeting Santa was a lovely experience and we felt that it was fantastic value for money with all that it included.

We will definitely go again next year. Thank you for having us Wookey Hole.

Disclosure: We were provided with 3 tickets in return for this review, however, all words, opinions and images are our own and have not been influenced in any way.

You can find out more about Wookey Hole and the Santaland Experience on their website http://www.wookey.co.uk/