Christmas at Schnepf Farms!

The holidays are always a fun time to go out to events with the family to see holiday lights and enjoy holiday festivities. We are lucky and we live near lots of different places that host holiday related events and we were recently invited to check out Christmas at Schnephf Farms located in Queen Creek, Arizona. Looking at the info online it shows the farm has a lot to offer, visits with Santa, cookie decorating, a train ride, bounce houses and more. We live about 45 miles away but it sounded like it would be an event worth driving too.

We were all pretty excited to attend, however I wish we would have gone on a different day than we did as things didn't quite work out as expected. Prior to leaving for the opening night I received an email letting us know that due to the rain storms we had the week prior a few of the attractions weren't going to be open on the night we were going which didn't seem like a big deal. With rush hour traffic it took us about an hour and a half to reach the farm but it wasn't too hard to find and they had a ton of parking available close to the entrance. We arrived about 45 minutes after they opened and were able to find a parking spot in the first row, we were a little surprised more people weren't there. Right away when you arrived the farm is covered in Christmas lights and it is a beautiful sight to see.

I am a blogger and part of what I do is including the good along with the bad (even when I feel bad about it, and don't want to sound like I am whining), our experience had good points and also bad points. When we arrived both girls at the entrance were extremely friendly and welcoming, walking in I was amazed by how many lights were up everywhere it was breathtaking and my eyes didn't know where to look because there were so many lights to see. The kids thought it was very pretty as well. After the long drive my daughter needed to use the bathroom so after taking in the view we set off to find a bathroom, we didn't really see any clear signs pointing to where anything was so I walked up to what I thought was a staff member sitting on a golf cart near guest services to ask where the bathroom was, she told me she wasn't sure but they are normally off to the right so just keep walking until we find it. We went the way we were told and we did find it! I was happy to see that the farm offers a large building for their bathrooms vs port-a-potties. The bathrooms were clean and seemed well taken care of.

Just past the bathrooms is the bounce house area. We got lucky and there was only one other child playing in the bounce houses so our kids pretty much had all three of the bounce houses to themselves. They had a ton of fun running around in all three of the bounce houses, and we liked that each bounce house was different, there was even one that was more suited for toddlers which was nice to see that they were included as well. The grassy area the bounce houses are in is gorgeous, I wish I had grass like that in my backyard!

There were three medium to large bounce houses in a grassy area for the kids to play in and a short distance away is a Huge bounce house obstacle course. I was honestly shocked at how big it was! Depending on the age of your child and how well they do with obstacle courses it will take 5-10 minutes to complete the obstacle course. There was no staff by the three smaller bounce houses but if you need help there were a few staff members near the obstacle course. They were letting in teens and adults as well which is nice because it looks like a lot of fun for all ages, If I hadn't of been a bit chilly I may have ran through with my kids as well.

After spending some time at the bounce houses we decided to go see what else the farm has to offer. They have a train ride that takes you around the farm to see a number of lights they have around the farm, the train is cute and the ride is packed with lights to see. They had a few photo cut outs to take photos with, a few small shops to see including a sweets shop that was packed with delicious goodies, a cookie decorating station where we saw Mrs. Clause helping out children and talking with them. They also had a Hot coco/coffee stand, the night we went was a lot colder than the previous several nights so we decided to get a coco. The line was pretty long and we stood in line for 15-20 minutes, when we got closer to the stand and were second in line we realize there was only one person working inside of the shop, which is no big deal, what was a big deal was seeing the guy taking people's money and credit cards with bare hands and then going over and making hot coco and putting marshmallows in the cup with the same bare hands he was just handling money with, without washing his hands in between! Yuck, so we decided it was a no go on hot coco and got out of line.

After getting out of line the kids wanted to ride on the carousel, the ride went on for a decent amount of time and the kids seemed like they were having a lot of fun. The ride is located conveniently in the middle of everything, with plenty of space for parents to wait for their children without being in the way of people wanting to walk by. We continued on to see the other half of the farm, I really wanted to take the hayride out to see the reindeer they had for everyone to visit but sadly we weren't able to. We went to where the "Hayride" sign was but there were no times posted and no staff near it to ask about how to get onto the hay ride so we ended up skipping it. I was actually kind of surprised there weren't more people both staff and guest wise. We walked around to check out all of the little buildings, Santa's workshop was pretty amazing inside and they have toys/ornaments available to purchase and decorate., they also had food and sweets for sale. We took a few photos with some of the large light displays and then we went home. We spent just over an hour at the farm, we did a few of the activities but it felt like we missed out on a lot for various reasons, we also didn't see any signs saying which of the activities were closed due to the rain. While the experience didn't work out quite how we wanted, my husband and I do want to take the kids back on a weekend when more people are likely to be there to experience the rest of the farm.

Disclaimer- Tickets to the event mentioned above were provided by Schnepf Farms for the review free of charge no other compensation was provided. However, no product compensation will influence the outcome of any review. My honest opinions are used in all reviews, they are solely my own & they may vary from others. My reviews are posted for readers in order to provide an informed decision before purchase.