Wanted to follow up and say I was extremely impressed with the place and how everything ran. I'm not sure what I was expecting overall but I was expecting the whole thing to feel like a racket that's just trying to squeeze as much money out of you as possible, but I definitely didn't have that feeling. Just some quick thoughts for those maybe on the fence, keep in mind this was a Tuesday, I'm sure the place is absolutely bonkers on the weekend:
- The ticket included everything we wanted to do. We were there over three hours and didn't pay extra for anything.
- I was really impressed by the food options and the prices weren't as bad as I expected. I'd say most of it was pretty decently priced, especially compared to like an A&M sporting event. It's not the best food in the world obviously, but it was pretty good. We had the pizza and then some onion rings. There were absolutely tons of options though.
- We took our toddlers (2 year old twins) and that was probably a mistake, but the four year old absolutely loved it. If we were doing it again we'd probably have gotten someone to watch the littles at home. They still had some fun, they liked the hayride with the lights and stuff, but it probably wasn't worth it for them because:
- This place is way bigger than I thought. I thought it was going to be like a go on the hayride, do the snow mountain, and then that's basically it, but no. We had to practically bribe the four year told to leave the snow playground, and we didn't even do the walk through light trail or go in any of the shops.
- The staff were really great and the attention to detail was really nice. Everything was really clean, they were cleaning off tables as soon as people left, etc.
- There were several areas to just kind of chill out, which is nice if you have kids. They can get too wound up and you just need a place to relax, maybe have a snack, whatever, and there were a lot of options. The little ones were struggling at one point so I took them down by the fire in the middle and they had fun just hanging by the fire and watching the house band (surprisingly good!)
My only complaint is the process getting in. If they're going to open the parking lots at 5 but not let people start actually getting in until 6, which causes a massive line out front, they should consider maybe roping off part of the park and letting people go ahead and scan their tickets to get in and wait there. This might have been in part because it was fairly cold and very windy yesterday, but most of the children in the line out front were about to riot by 6. Would have been nice to have a place to sit down and maybe go ahead and give the kids a snack or whatever. I assume and understand that staffing is probably the major hurdle here, but this is the only thing we encountered that I would really try and find a way to improve.
But again, overall I was extremely impressed, we didn't spend an absolute ton of money or anything (granted I'm sure if you're shopping there you can rack up a bill in a hurry), it was incredibly fun, everything was really well done. We'll definitely be going back next year and will probably leave our twins at home for one more year.
