Christmas at the Princess — Local services in Scottsdale

I've wanted to visit this event for the last few years, but didn't make it out until this year. There were some positives to the event and a few cons. For anyone looking for pricing without using groupon tickets are $35 per person and parking is an additional $35 per car.

Pros; I really loved the light display that is in the back over the water. They did a fantastic job with the set up, I loved the lights and the music played. 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.

There were lots of cute photo opportunity spots!

The letters to Santa area was adorable.

Cons; The Train! 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 the 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.

The Ferris wheel line. As others have also mentioned this line is also a one to two hour wait, we didn't bother getting on because we didn't want to waste the time in line.

Seeing the Auora ice section is an additional $20 per person.

Meeting/Taking a photo with Santa is $50

For the price we paid for our family to visit, I kind of feel like this spot is overpriced due to where it is located. For others this might be a spot they absolutely loved, but for us it was a bit of a letdown sadly. They did have a carnival type ride area set up for small children ages eight and under, we didn't visit that area as our kids are a little too old for the smaller rides. Maybe next year things will be improved a bit in the areas that...

My family has gone to the Princess Christmas event for the last five years or so. It started out great, but it has gone downhill in my opinion. Totally not worth the money and parking is expensive. This year they had only one ice slide and advertised it being larger than the last. It appears they added a couple of lanes to slide down but the kids working at the top were not trained well and only putting one or two people down at a time while we stood in a fairly reasonable line for 45 minutes - there was no reason for that wait. They were just very inefficient. We should’ve been able to go down three or four times but could only go once because of how long it took them to filter people through.

They eliminated the ice-skating rink around the slide this year as well, leaving only the one smaller one upfront. It was overcrowded and not worth the extra $35 fee. They advertised an ice bar in the Aurora ice building but when we went to go pay the $20 to check it out, we we’re told there was no bar - the website was misleading. They only had a few ice sculptures inside.

Lastly, we bought tickets in October during the 20% early bird period. I received email saying the 20% tickets were about to end so we jumped on it. However, when we got there, Dec 21st we learned the tickets were the same price. We never got the discount. We were really disappointed this year,...

I leave this review in hopes to save a needing family $300-$500 because honestly I can afford to lose this amount of money and the joke is on me, but I would hate for a needing family to waste their money. Parking issues and shuttle wait times are just the tip of the iceberg. Once you pay the admission and get inside you quickly realize that aside from mediocre Christmas decorations you don't really get anything. The free rides have impossible wait times, the ferris wheel wait time was 1.5 hours; or you could wait 20 minutes to do a 5 second ice slide after which your kids will want more but they will need to get back in line again. Drinks are $20, bottled waters are $10 but wait there is more, they had the nerve to offer private tables starting at $600 and up at this event which is geared for families with small children. We saw Enchant in Vegas last week and that was a thousand times better, heck I've seen numerous downtowns offer more exciting Christmas festivities for FREE. Don't get me wrong, I am not cheap and I've been spending money left and right on Christmas festivities this year but this venue was a huge...