Photo TR: Christmas Eve at Santa's Workshop

[MayTheGForceBeWithYou]

My family found out they had some free tickets to this park earlier today, so we decided to drop by for a few hours to see how the park is during the holiday season. Despite being the off season elsewhere, Santa's Workshop was still very lively and running their rides exceptionally well. I snapped a few pics to officially close out their season.

Welcome to the North Pole, now conveniently located in the Colorado mountains!

Looks were quite deceiving though, as the crowds were quite disperse and the lines for the rides never exceeded 10 minutes.

*Contains less than 1% peppermint. Sorry for the disappointment.

NOTED!

Whee!

First order of business, a quick ride on the Candy Cane Slide, made out of REAL peppermint*

While the Candy Cane Slide isn't really candy, the Tilt-a-Whirl is all kinds of awesome.

I'm serious, it would get stuck in a mad spin for about 3/4 of every ride! I've yet to see another installation that consistently delivers rides this well!

Oh yeah, there's a Paratrooper here, too!

I think they need to hire a new cartographer...

The Flyers, which had the longest wait of the rides. These, like the Tilt-a-Whirl, were also running extremely well. Unfortunately, the SOP next to the ride requires the operator to stop the ride if anyone starts snapping, so I didn't get to go *too* crazy with it.

View from walking off the Flyers. It's pretty scenic.

Whoring out the Rotowhip by contorting into weird angles to fit? CHECK!

Ooh! A Rotowhip! Wonder if I can actually fit my 6'2" body into this thing...

Random critters.

Once again...NOTED!

Seriously, the wheel is pretty high on the hillside and has a nice view of the valley.

A Scrambler...No entertaining caption for this one.

Apparently some of the Plains tribes live at the North Pole...I wouldn't have guessed!

Warm holiday wishes for everyone!

To over there. Timing it out, People would be waiting over an hour for a last-minute visit!

However, the most popular resident in these parts is Santa Claus (obviously). This was where most of the people in the park were queued up, starting from here...

Paratrooper doing its thing.

It looked seriously crowded today!

[kidcoaster 2]

Great time for this report! Every time I see this park it just seems very charming.

[MayTheGForceBeWithYou]

^It's definitely a nice little park. Even during the summer when the holidays are half a year away, it's still really appealing and has a wonderful atmosphere.

[KBrylczyk]

I love how they mention to sit on top of the bag on the slide. Being in Colorado I guess it makes sense that people would want a blanket during the ride, haha.

[MayTheGForceBeWithYou]

^Considering it was about 20º with heavy gusts, I think a lot of people would have tried!

[mattnz]

Love the setting and old school rides. I'm a Tilt-a-Whirl fan and it really is amazing how the installations seem to ride quite differently.

 

Great update for the season!

[AussieMum]

Looks like a nice family park

[MayTheGForceBeWithYou]

I'm a Tilt-a-Whirl fan and it really is amazing how the installations seem to ride quite differently.

That's part of why I love Tilt-a-Whirls. You never know how well it's running unless you get on it.

[RoCo]

I love Santa's Villages parks; it's such a bummer that we lost so many of them. Great to see this one alive and thriving, esp. on Xmas Eve!

[YoshiFan]

It's always good to see parks that don't have maximum height limits on rides like that Roto Whip so anyone who wants to ride it can.

[MayTheGForceBeWithYou]

^It was definitely nice of the park to remove that restriction. It makes it so much easier for people to whore it out!

 

Only a few of the rides had maximum requirements like a kiddie Ferris wheel and a motorcycle flat (didn't get pics of those), but it was nice to be able to get on rides that almost no other park would let an average adult ride.