For the last few years, I've wanted to visit the Christmas event they host at the Princess hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona. This year we were finally able to make it over to the event & sadly I have a bit of mixed feelings about the event. Everyone will have a different experience at events like this, and this is just our own personal experience. Christmas at the Princess is hosted at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess hotel. Tickets for the event for general admission are $35 per person, plus you'll need to pay $35 for parking.
I always like to include as much helpful information in my posts as I can so that anyone looking to attend & have questions know what they are getting themselves into. This experience just like others have positives & negatives, unfortunately for what was included in this experience I felt like it was overpriced. For example, several other Christmas destinations in Arizona include a meet & greet with Santa along with one photo. At the Princess it is an additional $50 to take a photo with Santa, or if you really want to go all out you can purchase a personal experience with Santa for $500.
So, let's start off on the positives of our visit to Christmas at the Princess. I really loved the light display that is in the back over the water. They did a fantastic job with the set up both with the lights and the music that played during each show. I also enjoyed the giant Christmas tree when you first walk into the main center area. They did a great job over all with the light displays throughout the property. They had fun characters walking around & taking photos with guests like the Snow Princess or a giant penguin, plus there were lots of cute photo opportunity spots around the property. Smaller children were able to write a letter to Santa & drop it into the mailbox to the North Pole. Thankfully the Ferris wheel & train ride are included in the admission cost however be prepared for a long wait. There is also a small carnival style area with a few rides for small children, I'd say ages 2-6 would be the best for the rides.
Now we have to dive into the negatives. The train ride is included with admission as mentioned above, but it was a big ole let down. On their website it states the train goes through a "17-foot-long infinity tunnel", I am not sure what they consider an "infinity tunnel" but we went through no such thing during the ride. Unless they consider the bit behind the water light display the tunnel then there is no tunnel & when we went behind the display out in the water it was all off because it was during a countdown for one of the shows. On the way back the show was going on, but we were on the back side of the displays, so everything was still off in that section. It didn't offer a look at anything different than you could see on foot. We stood in line for over an HOUR just to find out we had already seen everything on foot. Plus, the whole train ride only lasted 5 minutes. You may also run the possibility of all being smashed onto one seat on the train per group. We didn't bother getting on the Ferris wheel even though we wanted to because the line was huge, other people were talking about having to wait in line for one to two hours to get on it. It is still early in the season & from what someone in the train ride mentioned is that it gets even busier the closer you get to Christmas which means the lines will be even longer.
The ice den area is an additional $20 per person to see. It was also kind of difficult to navigate to some of the areas as there wasn't a ton of signage and even with a map things were set up kind of oddly. All in all, it felt like you spent $35 per person mostly just to look at lights. There were a lot of unhappy people in the line for the train talking about the experience, so I know we weren't the only ones who weren't completely satisfied with our experience. For some reason they only have a few google reviews up for this event even though it has been happening for years, they eight reviews that are currently up are a mixture of people who enjoyed it plus 1 & 2 stars from people who didn't like it at all.
There is room for improvement though so hopefully moving forward they change a few things to make it a little more guest friendly!
★ This is not a sponsored post, we paid for this on our own. I enjoy sharing new places we explore with my followers.
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