ENTER HERE TO WIN 4 TICKETS TO SANTA'S VILLAGE AMUSEMENT AND WATER PARK.
Its been awhile since we last visited Santa's Village Amusement and Water Park. In fact, Santa Springs, which is what they call the water park, didn't exist back then. We loved bring our kids ever since they were toddlers. We even spent my son's 8th birthday at the park. They seemed to love the petting zoo aspect the most.
They are now 13 and 11 and roller coaster junkies, so we decided to go back to Santa's Village with a little hesitation. Our mission was simply to ride one of their newest ride additions, the Super Cyclone Roller Coaster. Everything else would be gravy.
We had an absolute blast of a day!
My son, who has ridden every ride at other local amusement parks, is strangely intimidated by the Sea Dragon, otherwise known as the River Rocker, or Pirate Ship at other parks. This is my favorite ride at Santa's Village, and my daughter and I rode it over and over, while my son sat in the shade, where we could see him, eating ice cream.
One of the biggest takeaways of the day was that there were no lines for anything! Granted it was a Thursday, but we have tried other parks (where we are season pass holders) on every day of the week this season, and haven't found a non-crowded one yet.
Next we made a bee-line for the Super Cyclone. We walked right on. It is no "Goliath", but it was fun. Basically an outdoor mousetrap, it is certainly not high on the thrill-o-meter, but we could easily ride it over and over, in the front car. And this chicken of a mom, even put her hands in the air!
My kids made it more amusing to themselves by closing their eyes, or on one iteration, turning their heads around during the ride to watch their old mom scream.
Despite my inherent fear of heights, I will ride almost any ride my kids ask of me. However, I refuse free-falls and rides that hold you upside down, so my kids rode The Blizzard, and Xtreme Elevation without me. Last, we rode Tri-Nado as a family, and "drove" the antique cars. Already, six rides, well-suited for teens and tweens, was more than we expected, and this was completed including multiple rides, within two hours.
We then headed to the petting zoo and watched a tortoise devour a cucumber, which was crazy to see. We then, fed the assortment of sheep, goats, alpaca, donkeys etc., and watched the wallaby jump around. My kids thoroughly enjoyed this as much as they ever did. You probably never really outgrow petting zoos. Note - you need cash for animal feed, as well as carnival games!
After the petting zoo, we grabbed some lunch, and headed over to Santa Springs. I knew we couldn't go wrong here. Tons of lawn chairs surrounding one of those water playscapes, called Lighthouse Harbor, with small water slides, and cannons, dumping buckets, hoses, sprinklers, etc. getting you went from all angles. It is eight inches deep with a zero-depth entry. What was great about it for me, was that I wasn't allowed on the slides even if I wanted to, so I had no choice but to sit back and relax and watch the kids be silly. We all just spent some time lying down in the eight inch wading pool before braving the two larger water slides, the Caribbean Curl and the Peppermint Twist.
At the end of the day, and a full day it was, I asked my kids if it was something they would want to do again, and they both said yes.
There are few places that all ages can truly enjoy, and Santa's Village proved to be one of them.
