Christmas Ranch — Local services in Lebanon

Not a great experience for young kids!!

I've been in the past but they seem to have outgrown the quality experience. You arrive and they have a sign telling you to set your radio to a station but it doesn't work until you LITERALLY pull in to pay. You are then in your car for LESS THAN 1 MINUTE before you get out and have to walk it all. (I swear I remember more driving last time and actually getting to enjoy the musical accompaniment feature.)

Go inside, nice displays, good lighting. Hoping to enjoy the walk. Signal, three year old needing to go to the bathroom. Cue, HORRIBLE lines for FOUR porta potties!!!! My daughter proceeded to have an accident waiting in line. We then had to continue to wait in line, with her all wet in 25 degree temperatures to use a porta potty to change. Deciding to try to find a building to change, we walk around for 10 minutes (my daughter all wet, shivering in the cold) to no avail. We ended up holing up behind a fence to get her out of her wet clothes.

Next experience, Gift shops! Cute little buildings but BEWARE, you break it, you bought it!!! Same daughter, dry now, holding an ornament, drops it on the floor. We walk around for a bit, holding the ornament, see at least 5 or 6 broken ornaments along the way. Show it to the cashier, she proceeds to ring it up, no offer of comping it which would typically be the expectation. She jokes about how I can bring up the story at her wedding...yeah, that along with peeing in her pants after long lines at the porta potty 🙄...Leaving, cue my niece, also 3, breaking another ornament...cha, ching goes the cash register.

Extended hours, open to 10, no food but cookies and popcorn. Printers down for Santa pictures. Thankfully, they still let you take pictures with your cells, but some folks who paid ahead were having some difficulties.

Just no longer a positive experience for my family and me. Our souvenirs included wet, stinky clothes, a broken firefighter ornament (no one in our family is a firefighter), and a broken moose ornament (it had many mooses but not enough to actually be the correct number to count as a family ornament).

If you have older children, some of these issues would be non-issues and you can have a great time (eat ahead of time). But if you still have young kids, the long lines for the "bathrooms" (porta potties) and over-priced ornaments your kids will likely break make it a lot less of a joyous experience. I am sad to say this is one less family tradition we will not be...

Really disappointed with our fist trip here and will not be returning.

As this is an evening venture we booked a local hotel (we're almost 2 hours away) and made it into a whole Holiday trip for the grandkids with the main attraction being The Christmas Ranch...

Unfortunately the traffic getting in is AWFUL. We spent TWO hours on the last 0.9 miles of our drive - it was only 20 minutes from our hotel.. I would've understood a slow line moving in but that was absolutely ridiculous. If we hadn't prepaid for not only our parking but 16+ tickets also we would've left line after 30 minutes but unfortunately that wasn't a viable option for us. We budgeted to make this trip happen..

We were under the impression the prepaid parking was required to limit traffic but that's obviously not true. So if you decide to go don't bother prepaying so at least you can leave line without losing your money. We saw at least 15+ vehicles turn around during our wait and wished we were one of them.

Two hours waiting in line with a vehicle full of kids is not what holiday fun is... Not any kind of fun.

The ranch was okay to walk around despite the constant muddy gravel. The train ride and hay ride appeared to go basically the same route so that was also a bummer so we skipped on doing both and only did the train (after an almost hour wait, kids came and went as we waited in line.)

Shops were okay, lots of breakables & pricey of course. Don't know what prices were for Santa because we didn't get a chance to even see a pricing list. We were looking forward to hot cocoa and funnel cakes but they weren’t offering funnel cakes and the stand alone hot cocoa booth was closed - which meant your only option to get some was the long wait lines in the restaurants.

Slow moving lines was the theme of this ranch.

We ended up not giving them any more money after having spent more time in line than we did exploring the lights once inside, especially since they close at 10 and we didn't get in till 8:30. Though cars were coming in still even at 9:45 - I hope they weren't charged but probably were.

Every guest we spoke with was unhappy with their visit and also said they would not be returning. Several of them had been in years past but were also let down with this year’s visit.

Maybe if there's some serious reorganization this could be an enjoyable experience but I would NOT recommend this as a "must visit"...

We drove for an hour with the hope of enjoying a good time together. Although the ticket prices were high and the services were not cheap, we were still excited because I believed this was a community-oriented service. However, I was deeply disappointed with the attitude of some of the staff members here.

We arrived around 7:15 PM after arranging to visit after work. After patiently waiting in a long line for a photo with Santa Claus, we decided to grab something to eat. It was around 8:30 PM, and I didn't realize that the services closed at 9:00 PM. We placed our food order and asked if we could sit together at one table. However, the staff refused to allow us to combine our tables.

It was frustrating, but we agreed to sit at two separate tables nearby and moved a couple of chairs closer so we could still be near each other. But again, the staff would not allow this. I found this very rude and felt that the company’s rule was unreasonable and inconsiderate. This was the time we had set aside to spend with our family. We paid a significant amount for this experience, and this small policy made us genuinely unhappy.

When I expressed my dissatisfaction, the staff member, who was cleaning the floor, began to gather with others and seemed to laugh or make light of the situation. I couldn't help but wonder if they were upset because we arrived close to closing time or if it was just a matter of strictly adhering to the rules. Earlier, at the souvenir shop, I also felt that the staff wanted us to leave quickly, which added to our frustration.

I don’t think I’ll ever make the long drive here again to be treated this way. My advice to others: if you can’t make it earlier, it’s not worth spending the money to be treated like we were.

I also wonder if the treatment was partly because we are Asian. The company really needs to improve the quality of their service so that customers feel they get what they pay for.

My White boyfriend told me I shouldn’t write this review because the staff were just following policy and they are young. I’m not sure if it’s the policy or if the staff just didn’t know how to handle the situation better. But after driving for an hour through dangerous roads in the dark to experience service like this, it really wasn’t worth it.

Apologies to my boyfriend for writing...