Taking family to Lapland to see Santa – tips/thoughts/experiences

We were thinking of taking the kids to Lapland this coming xmas, they’ll be 5 and 6

Has anyone got any tips they can share? Quick bit of googling throws up a whole range of prices and things.

It’s hard to get a sense of how much time you actually need to do things, a day trip sounds like it might be hard work with the kids, all over quite quickly and they’ll be tired, but something like 3-4 days might be a bit boring?

How anyone somehow tagged it onto a different holiday? It’s all a bit chilly up there though…

Also keen not to get [too] stitched up by extras and unnecessary tat

Ben, we’re off to Rovaniemi in a few weeks for the race. I can grab some info locally if you want. I’m assuming that there are charter flights direct – we’re going via Helsinki and it takes most of a day. Might be worth asking on the BB forum as well since at least two regulars on there have been.

Thomas Cook do a one night stop oever version & we’ve booked it for next xmas. I do however feel physically violated at the cost, but the Mrs wanted to do it and SWMBO, well, MBO 🙂

If the choice had been mine entirely, I reckon I’d have found a ski holiday with a bit of Santa stuff tagged on for about 50% less!

Bob, thanks, that would be great.

I’ll post up on BB too, when I saw Rovaniemi in the Lapland info I immediately thought of the fatbike race

Don’t do the the one day option. It was too rushed.

If you go on 19th December, there will be no daylight.

If you do the budget option, the food will be utter shite.

Minus 28 degrees is chuffing cold.

Make sure neither of your kids has a Santa phobia.

Avoid our mistakes and you’ll have a great time!

We did the day trip 9 years ago when our lad was 6. We spent the night before in a hotel close to Gatwick and he lasted the day quite happily. It is a long day but more than half of it is in a coach or plane seat where most kids can nod off for a bit.
Tips:
Take snacks. They feed you adequately but no more and a day in the cold gives you quite an appetite.
Take lots of photos. Nine years on our boy hardly remembers any of it unprompted.

We did a 4 day trip in 2015. The rovaniemi places are nice but very touristy and busy so we wanted something different so we went with Nordic experience to the wilderness lodge in Nellim right up north.
Because it’s a 2 flight destination day 1 and day 4 are mainly travelling but it was without doubt the best experience our kids could ever have. It’s the only place there and only has about 40 guests. It was fantastic.

We went to Saariselkä with Santas lapland. 2 nights,three days plus a night at Manchester airport hotel before the flight out.

Kids were 9,7 and 5 at the time.

The trip was fantastic, I really couldn’t fault it. Impressive organisation, great kit for the outdoors, enthusiastic staff and not at all commercial. No gift shop, no tat, it was really well done. I wouldn’t recommend going for one day, go for at least two.

Food wasn’t brilliant but the trip was one of the most memorable e have been on and I’m so glad we have the kids that experience.

Sorry to be that guy but..

One of my mate’s went to Rovaniemi in December just past with his six year old and he said it was utterly crap.

Apparently the trip to see Santa was the most disappointing. He’d been told by the travel agents that they would secretly fill out a big questionnaire about the child to be passed onto Santa so he would magically know all about them. And that they would get at least half an hour with Santa.

Apparently the reality was more like going to see a Santa at a garden centre. Stood in a queue for ages for a five minute visit. All they asked was name, age and present.

He also said the dinners were like a school canteen hall.

He did get speaking to one guy who candidly said “Yeah it used to be much better but it’s got so busy in recent years and we don’t really have the facilities”

I think his kid enjoyed it, for what it’s worth, but she hasn’t really mentioned it since, it cost an absolute fortune and it was pretty far from the magical experience promised.

🙁

That’s a shame and it is what I was worried about but our experience couldn’t have been further removed.

When it was our turn to see him we were taken on a sleigh ride into the forest to his house. They made sure there was no queue or even other family’s in sight

Some slight of hand and trickery meant that Santa magically had the kids letters that they had previously put in the fire at home.

I pretty much believed in the magic by the time we left

Went to Finland 10 years ago over Christmas for 5 days, to this day the kids still rave about it being their best holiday. We spent the first day on a lake doing avtivities, quads, ice hockey, fishing, skidoos etc, the next day a visit to a husky farm and a 10km trip through the forest on a sled with dogs, they put the kids and wife in the sled, me on the back and undid the rope, brilliant fun, the dogs just followed the quad bike there must have been 10 teams running at one time. We did a skidoo safari the next day for adults and met the kids at various points through the day, massive snowball fights ensued each time we met them., the final day We went skiing before the flight back.

Food was great, there was sledging at the hotel and each evening there was a kids club

It was very expensive but great fun.

Interested in this thread as we are also thinking if going next December. Those who had great experiences can you share who the tour operator was? Seems a real mix between great and just okay, for the expense involved I want to make the right choices.

I have done the short stay Rovaniemi trip with Thomas Cook and also our ‘own’ 7 day trip to Levi with Inghams.

The short (4 night) trip was OK but very commercialised, the Santa trip is pretty much to a theme park. The other thing to watch out with Rovaniemi is that snow is not guaranteed in the early/mid part of December.

Levi was a totally different experience, much more laid back. We visited Levi on a day trip when we went to Rovaniemi because there was no snow (otherwise we would not have known about it).

I booked through Inghams, a really nice self catering apartment with open fire, sauna, kitchen etc. SC suits us better, I find it more comfortable and relaxing than a hotel. The apartment was very close to the ski slope.

It is sold as a skiing holiday through Inghams, you can book trips through them (or do it yourself).

I booked the santa trip myself, it consisted of about a one hour snowmobile ride (me driving, wife behind and the kids in a towed pod behind the skimobile). We eventually came to a cottage, ‘Santa’ came out to greet the kids and then took them in a reindeer pulled sleigh. There were about 15 kids so they all had plenty of time with him. We then went into the cottage where there was a big open fire, they all had time to go and tell him what they wanted etc.

The other highlight was husky sledding, about 30km ride (with me mushing and the family on the sled) through snowy forests.

You don’t have to do the skiing, but it is a great place for beginners and there is a special place for the kids to learn.

The 7 night Inghams holiday was cheaper than the 4 day Santa trip!

We ended up going to Levi 3 times (although without the Santa trips when the kids were older).

Edit: Inghams usually do early bird offers if you book around now.

We did 4 nights through Inghams with a self catering log cabin in Yllas when my little’un was 5, and I’ve got to say it was the best family holiday we’ve ever done. So good we’re going back next December.
The santa “experience” we did was very good, you barely knew any other people were there, because of the way we were carefully moved around.
Loads of other fun trips on snow mobiles, huskies and decent skiing all helps too.
Its the sense of total winter I loved – none of our half arsed winters!

It seems a lot of money to spend on something you are going to tell them is a fib in a few years time. I love going to snowy places at Xmas, but why emotionally invest them more in Santa than there is already? Tons to do without invoking him…

Genuinely puzzled.

Pfft. Fly all that way for commercialised santa theme park tacky crap?

As said above – Lapland is stunning. And kids to appreciate it. Go on AirBnB and book a cabin in the woods, hire a car, do some cool outdoor stuff like dog sledding. Worth far more for your kids than commercial Americanised crap.

Finland in general is incredible. Tacky theme parks are not.

Thanks for the comments, (mostly) very helpful.

The names of the companies are handy, I’ll look into Inghams. I like the idea of getting a self catering place and then doing a trip out to see Santa

out trip (described in my earlier post) was with these guys
Santas Lapland[/url]

I assume the moaning comments about theme parks are by posters who have not actually been there.

You are buying a memory and experience that your kids will never forget.

We went to Iso Syote this past Christmas. It was ace! Dog sledding, snow mobiling, sledding, saunas and a great visit to santa. Just great!

We have just been to Rovaniemi on the Thomas Cook Santa Experience for one day and i cannot recommend it enough. The day is meticulously planned to perfection, you get plenty of time to do the activities and we had approx 4hrs free time in Santa’s Village which was more than enough. I couldn’t imagine going for more than a day as all you will gain is more time to play in snow. The day trip is very tiring but money well spent in my opinion, so much so i am contemplating doing the same again next xmas.

Quick update on this – trip booked!

I rang quite a few places and in short, there was no availability from Gatwick. OK from Bristol and Manchester but nothing from London. We were limited by not wanting to take the kids out of school.

It was getting ridiculously expensive for a short trip of 2-3 days, and I was hoping to go for about a week

So I’ve booked flights and 3 different AirBnB places, Rovaniemi, then Levi, then back towards Rovaniemi again. I’ll be hiring a car and will arrange for various excursions/trips plus some skiing. (I might try and sneak in an e fatbike jaunt in the snow…) It works out around the same price, maybe a touch more, but I’m getting more choice and I get a trip twice as long. We’ve got a guaranteed white christmas!

Thanks for all the advice

Not difficult riding but it’s worth just riding up the Ounasjoki river as far as you want (worth getting over the Arctic Circle) then riding back. Once it’s frozen the route is marked with wands, about 10Km from town there’s even a massive road sign at a sort of ice-road crossroads. The river’s about 500m wide so it feels quite open. Looking at Google maps, Levi is on the same river but a long way north.

There’s a couple of museums/exhibitions in Rovaniemi worth going to: Arktikum which is generally more suited to adults and the forestry museum next door, a lot better than it sounds and with lots of interactive stuff for kids – get scanned by lasers; simulated elk shooting (I kid you not!); training simulator for big massive tree felling machine.

Good stuff, thanks Bob. I’m excited!

There’s a couple of places in Rovaniemi now doing fatbike hire – the OW XC ski shop looked to have the best stuff. Ride south to Niskanpera Laavu, about 10km south on the Kemijoki River – had a well-stocked woodstore and I endeavoured to burn about half of it mid-way around the Rovaniemi 300 at 1am in the morning – it was about -20C and I’d been moving for 16 hours so I felt it was well-earnt!

Niskanpera Laavu

Fatbiking in the arctic is over-rated 😉

Did a week in Levi, 2 years ago, kids 6 & 9, both learnt to ski, did loads of sledging, snowmobile ride, trip to see Santa was brilliant, went with inghams, everything was bang on. They had Fat bikes to hire, wish I had got one for a couple of hours. Recommended to two sets of friends who have both now been/booked twice.

Niskanpera Laavu looks amazing but there’s no chance I’m going to get time to go out there

I’m hoping that we’ll get a chance to do those things in Levi – skiing, sledging, snowmobiles and husky ride are all on the list!

Just need to sort warm kit out for the kids (as it’s a self booked trip). Think the adults potentially have enough already, though might need to get some warm trousers for my wife