Santa’s Village Amusement & Water Park

Worst birthday party I've ever thrown. I booked a party here for my son's 5th birthday back in May. First of all the party was expensive for what we received. $500.00 for the amount of work we had to do for the party was ridiculous.

There was no check-in system for the guests-I had to stand at the front of the park for over an hour in 90 degree weather to greet each guest and inform the person at the kiosk who each party goer was. At other places your guests would receive a QR or barcode to scan so they host could continue hosting. When I asked what the process was the manager laughed and said "we don't actually have one this whole party thing is new for us". Party packages being a new option is understandable. Making your guests do the leg work because you still don't have a process in place while charging top dollar is not.

My package came with 2 pizza's and lemonade. We informed the park manager that we wanted them served around 1230. The time came and went and no pizzas. I walked over the to the pizza parlor and they informed me that the pizza's were ready but we needed to grab them ourselves. I had to rally some of my party goers to help carry pizza, napkins, utensils, pictures of lemonade cups etc. I was so embarrassed and upset....it took us six trips just to get the kids fed. Remember the is a 500.00 party and we could not even get someone to drop the pizza's and lemonade off at the table.

The park would not allow us to bring our own cake. Santa's Village does not have cakes....yes you're reading correctly they don't offer cake and you can't bring one. So I was forced to buy cup cakes. And you guessed it! We had to carry all of the cup cakes to the table. There was no carrying case bugs were swarming on cupcakes during the trips to the table. 5 trips later we're finally about to sing the HBD song when I look down at the cup cakes and they look absolutely disgusting. They are all different shapes, some are huge some are small, they're lopsided and look like an unsupervised kid baked them. The frosting is super lumpy- instead of using a piping bag to apply frosting they used a plastic butter knife (I learned this on the 5th trip back because they left 2 cupcakes out of the order and the two teens behind the counter pulled out a huge bucket of frosting and two plastic knives and got to work). The frosting was littered with crumbs from the knives and bugs from the walk back. The kids tasted them and were grossed out. They were hard, dry and the cake itself had an odd flavor to it. We gathered them all and tossed them in the trash.

I was so upset and mortified I spent over an hour apologizing to the parents individually of the kids who attended the party with their children. These parents had to pay full price just to chaperone (they did not ride any rides) and immediately get to work upon arriving. Other family members like grand parents who attended the party with no children and did not ride any rides had to pay full price as well. This park is a fun place for kids in the summer but they have no business throwing parties. They need to stop offering the "party" option until they are able to streamline the process. Seems like someone decided it'd be a great way for the park to make money but did not hire any additional staff to work these parties nor did they take the time to make the party experience quality.

The park made at least $1,500 from that very unenjoyable experience.

Beware!! Please don't throw parties here. For $1,500.00 you could have a really nice enjoyable party elsewhere and create some really great memories.