Day 2 - Santa's Village

The brochure for Santa's Village states that it is less than an hour's drive from North Conway.  It's approximate 58 minutes, which is less than an hour, so plan accordingly.  After breakfast at the hotel, we loaded up our van and headed out for Day 2 of our mini vacation.




I brought the girls' Christmas dresses because they can be worn as sundresses and I thought it would be fun for them to be in the spirit of Christmas.  (They did have the option of wearing regular clothes but they all chose their Christmas dresses.)  I didn't expect to receive as many comments as we did.  At both SL and SV, we had a lot of folks ask if the girls were twins or triplets.  At SV, quite a few women approached us to ask about their dresses.  Did someone make them?  What pattern did you use?  They look like little dolls.




My kids love Santa's Village just as much as Story Land.  The two parks are different but we don't prefer one over the other.  The girls' list of favorites at Santa's Village includes finding elves for their Elfabet cards, Rudy's (roller) Coaster, The Yule Log Flume and The Chimney Drop.  We rode the flume and the chimney drop more than once.  That was our first time on the flume ride at SV.  It is tucked away in a wooded corner so I'm not sure if we missed it last year or if it was closed due to hurricane clean up.  Anyway, the drop is steeper than the ride at SL.

At SL, we were only able to take two of the girls on that log ride with us.  At SV, we were able to bring all three.  (Grammy sat out.) For our last ride (and we rode this one several times), we did bring all three on with us.  We had been alternating children because we weren't sure if it was safe or not but after riding it a few times and seeing them allow a dad to ride it with 5 small kids, all 5 of us climbed in.  Em and I sat in the front.  Behind our seat was Allie, then Anna and then Rich.  Before the drop, I told Allie to hold on tight.  After the drop, Allie yelled out, "I held on tight, Mommy.  I'm still here."




My child posing with a trash can.






View from the ferris wheel










Rich and Emily.



Rich is afraid of heights too but I convinced him to ride it just for the views.  Don't look down - look out.



















Because the girls wanted to swim again at the hotel after dinner, we had planned to try to leave Santa's Village a bit early so that we could stop for dinner before returning to the hotel.  We left much later than we wanted to but it all worked out.  We stopped and picked up pizza to eat out on our balcony, which was probably a better plan than our original one because when we drove by the Red Fox, the parking lot was packed. 

The ride back to North Conway is full of sights and mountain views.  Some day when I'm an old lady with time to spare, I'll return and explore with my camera.







We spent about half an hour to 45 minutes swimming each night.  The girls wore their water wings but each had a turn in the water with us without any.  There was a ledge, almost like a bench, along one side of the shallow end.  Allie decided, much to my surprise and delight, that she liked dunking underwater and was actually jumping from the ledge into the pool and dunking completely under before popping up.  We are slowly making progress with swimming.    

For the second night, Allie slept with me while Anna slept on the cot.  It was low to the ground so I wasn't too concerned with her rolling out.  She was so tired that she barely moved throughout the night.  The next morning, we packed up the van to head home after breakfast at the hotel.




I wished we could have stayed longer but our BIG Disney vacation will be here before we know it.

Allie with Fashion Poodle, aka Twinkle Toes.