Elgin Christmas Tree Farm — Local services in Elgin

I felt very disappointed with this place, especially as a parent. Reading the comments online, it seems that there was a change in the ownership of the place recently so this review is for the new farm. First you have to pay a fee to enter the farm( they don’t charge for parking, yet). It’s 10 bucks per person, kids under 2 are free, so it’s not expensive but that includes practically nothing, just pay to enter. Then you have to buy tickets for the activities and here is when the problems start. First the tickets, you have to start doing math finding how many tickets it’s one activity or another , as a parent is very annoying and you end up wasting a ton of money, because you don’t know how many times your kids will want to do an activity( luckily all of them are pretty boring except the petting zoo).Petting zoo is 6 dollars( 3 tickets) per person PER every time you go to the area. They have 2 inflatables , one is a slide and the other one is for jumping, both really small(small birthday party small) 2 dollars( one ticket )for 3 minutes per kid for the jump and 3 runs through the slide for the slide , even if it is completely empty they are strict to those rules. They are going to bleed you in there and the kids aren’t going to have any fun because no one is there as soon as the other parents see the scam. The people working at the petting zoo were really nice and good with kids. The people at the other activities were terrible, but in a sense that you can feel their stress for having to follow these policies. The food is mediocre at best and the entire area is very small( the farm seems huge but full of signs to not go in there, or climb anything just have any fun). It’s not a place for kids and it is not a farm we recommend. We planned on going to get a Christmas tree but after going there … we will look for a different place. This place should charge a higher fee to enter and get rid of the ticket system, just let the kids have fun as much as they want and how many...

"Very disappointed this year" I will start with our good memories of the farm then I'm sure you will figure out why we were disappointed this year . It has been a tradition for many years for our family to go to the farm the day after Thanksgiving . For weeks we would talk about how excited we were to go to the farm and we could hardly wait until Thanksgiving day to come because we couldn't wait to go to the farm. appon arriving we would first visit the farm animals then we would work our way over to get our tree tag would then walk over to get on the wagon along the ride we would laugh and take pictures . We then would walk around till we found the perfect tree in our eye's we would drop out tree off with a friendly face that would tell us to wait for the next wagon coming and they would take our tree up to be taken care of . We would ride back up having a wonderful time we would send the girls to have some play time as my husband and I would visit the Beautiful gift shop where we would shop around for the perfect little trinket for each of our girls making sure they put them separately in the little red bags. We would then go get the girls pay for our tree our oldest daughter would get a wagon we would find our tree and put it in the wagon as our youngest daughter would get in so she could ride with her tree to the truck . This year was a real disappointment as everyone was very rude the older lady at the farm animals was very rude the line's felt like we were at a water park it was not family tradition like .it was more like being at a carnival not a home town family affair the kids were very disappointed as my husband and I were too ! So...

The new owners should have left everything alone...tree prices have jumped up significantly and they shut down 90 percent of the gift shop. We have been going to the Elgin Christmas tree farm since my oldest daughter was born..so 10 yrs ago, and have gotten ornaments from the shop every year..except this one because they literally had 3 ornaments to choose from, a few beanies and scrunchees and some crochet ornaments. Sadly this is the last year we will be getting a tree here, unless the prices go back down to last years and the gift shop returns back to its normal 100 percent. The guys(Bobby and Kaeden) that took our trees and put them on the trailer, just threw them up there with no disregard or caution of breaking or messing up these people's trees. I saw several trees get messed up from the way they handled the trees. Mine got the top branch ripped off, so my branch for my tree topper gone I will say the one thing they changed that I liked was the way they did the tree sorting/pickup process, but that's about it. Oh and the girl that checked me out didn't say 1 word during the process, not hello, Hi, how's your day, how was your visit..nothing . She just held her hand out, and grabbed my card. Then when the amount popped up on the screen I payed, she gave me my receipt and said have a merry Christmas in the most monotone voice you...