Santa Grotto Experience At The Children’s Play Village
Santa Grotto Experience At The Children’s Play Village
2020 has been the strangest of years across the kingdom. With so many of our favourite things cancelled, including so many little believer’s Christmas visits to the Village. However all was not lost…Berry & Sparkles our most determined elves used all their elf negotiation training to hatch a plan and rescue Christmas. Only yesterday did we get approval that all airspace restrictions have been lifted in Warwick and Santa can fly from the North Pole and visit little believers at our Play Village.
Our Christmas Wish Has Been Granted
As you may already be aware, Santa Grottos are permitted to re-open in all Tiers however, as a venue that was required to close this was not something we could initially offer. With the support of our local authority and a clear plan on how we could adapt our visits, along with a monumental effort from our team, we plan to re-open our Play Village as an indoor Santa Grotto Experience. We will be using our entire beautifully decorated and twinkling Village to offer families a fully indoor warm and magical visit with Santa, The Magical Christmas Fairy & his Cheeky Elves from Wednesday 9th December up until the 16th December.
From the 17th December onwards we are hopeful that we will be able to re-open our Play Village with our original Santa Saves Christmas Events running as planned. However if Warwick remains in Tier 3 or we feel that is unlikely to change we will of course extend our Santa’s Grotto Experience and offer those with tickets already booked for visits between 17th and 24th December the chance to convert their booking and come to see Santa
What Will Our Santa Grotto Experience Involve?
The Santa Grotto Experience will be a one hour long visit in our beautifully decorated Village for up to 12 children and their grown up/s. Santa, The Magical Christmas Fairy and the elves need all the help of the children to create some much needed festive cheer and spirit. The visit will include:
Being greeted by Santa’s cheeky and playful elves who will show you to your allocated sofa or table.
A beautiful entrance by Shimmer Our Magical Christmas Fairy who will illuminate the twinkling Village lights and the Christmas Tree star.
Shortly followed by Santa who will greet all children and families with a big HO, HO, HO. Along with Shimmer and the elves. Santa will invite all the children to join in for some festive songs and activities. Each family will be allocated their own shop for each activity and throughout Santa, The Magical Christmas Fairy & The Elves will be playing along with some songs and dancing.
The festive session comes to a close with a story from Santa in his sleigh and of course all children will receive a gift from Santa Claus with a socially distanced opportunity for you (or one of our helpful elves) to take a beautiful photograph with Santa to remember your visit. Santa himself will be with children and families for the entire visit.
Restrictions To Be Aware Of
As part of the COVID secure restrictions we must remove all toys from our role play areas and free play within the role play areas is not permitted. However, we will be using our role play areas for families to remain in their family bubble and partake in festive activities keeping you all as secure and safe as possible.
We are not permitted to offer a food or beverage service throughout the 1 hour festive session so our Bistro will remain closed. However, we are permitted to offer a take away service and we will be able to prepare drinks and delicious cakes and Christmas biscuits from the award winning Pin Wheel Patisserie for you to take away on your departure if you choose.
All Guests Who Have Booked Visits From the 1st – 16th December
Whilst we are delighted to be given this permission unfortunately, we are unable to commence our Santa Grotto Experience until Wednesday 9th December which will be after some guests’ original planned visit. If you have made a booking from the 1st – 8th December, we will be refunding all guest bookings, or move booking to Christmas 2021 by Monday 7th December, depending on your preference recently shared with us.
We will be contacting all guests who have visits booked from 9th December to 16th December to offer each the option of converting their booking to our new Santa’s Grotto Experience. We will be asking guests to let us know if they wish to attend a Santa Grotto Experience on the date of their original booking within a short deadline.
Once this deadline is passed we will then email all guests who made bookings for the 1st – 8th December again to offer the opportunity to access our booking system to purchase any available remaining tickets for The Santa Grotto Experience on dates between 9th December and 16th December before they are released for sale to the general public.
We have done all that we can to rescue Christmas at The Children’s Play Village and offer our guests a Festive Experience despite the obstacles put in front of us. We appreciate that, as we cannot commence our Santa Grotto Experience until after the date of some guests’ visits, they will not have had the immediate opportunity to convert their original booking. However we are trying hard to give guests the best opportunity to visit us before Christmas by making sure these guests are offered tickets before the general public, but also ensuring all funds are returned to you so you have the opportunity to make alternative arrangements.
Ticket Pricing
The Santa Grotto Experience will be priced at £15 per child, £2.50 per adult and £2.00 per baby/crawler. All children will receive an age appropriate gift from Santa. All guests who wish to transfer their booking will be refunded for any difference in their original booking payment once the booking has been moved to our Santa Grotto Experience.
Guests Who Wish To Visit Us Who Do Not A Visit Booked
Our initial priority is to ensure all families who had made a booking with us have the opportunity and first refusal to transfer their booking to our Santa Grotto Experience. Once we received all the preferences of our guests and transferred bookings we will then release any remaining tickets for sale and we plan to release these on Monday the 7th December.
Festive session times from the 9th-16th December will be:
9.30am-10.30am / 10.45am-11.45am /12.30pm-1.30pm /1.45pm – 2.45pm /3.30pm – 4.30pm /4.45pm – 5.45pm
We will share the release of tickets via our social media pages and our website, and we anticipate spaces will be available to book.
Best Wishes
The Play Village Team
