Wonderland — Local services in Town of Rotterdam

Embarrassingly BAD!

These people leaving three/four/five star reviews must not get out much. Either that and/or it’s a bunch of paid reviewers or friends of the owners. I’ve never written a review, but felt compelled to finally do so because of how bad this experience was.

Calling it a ripoff is an understatement. You’re basically paying $10 to stand in line for an hour to have your picture taken with Santa…so you can then pay $12 to get a copy of it.

Along the way there are some additional characters to get your photo with (Elsa, Anna, Olaf, snowman, gingerbread man, Minion, etc).

My youngest was looking forward to the “life-sized” gingerbread house. She was severely disappointed after realizing it was just a tiny room with a sign in the counter that said “Gingerbread Man had to make a run. He’ll be back soon!” The description on the website is misleading. Saying “you can meet the Gingerbread Man and many more magical friends” implies it’s some big area to walk through. It’s a 10x10 room (probably smaller) that can comfortably fit the Gingerbread Man (if he’s there) and a group of four people standing shoulder to shoulder.

Seeing all of those characters and the gingerbread house took five minutes and then we stood in line for an hour because there is a giant bottleneck at the tiny tunnel to get to the side where the two rooms with Santa’s are.

Bought my daughters $4 lollipops while we waited. Figured they would be locally made or of a decent quality. Nope. They are made by “Sweet Smiles” and sold for $1 at Dollar General (I googled it).

Overall, it was just a bunch of miserable parents complaining about how stupid it was to make people pay to have a bunch of small children wait in line for an hour with nothing to do.

The two family’s in front of us and a few behind us ended up leaving once we got through the bottleneck and saw how much longer we still had to wait to see Santa. My tween was pushing for us to do the same, but we stuck it out for the little one.

Once you finally make it through the Santa rooms (you go to one or the other) you enter a larger area with a concession stand, a couch with the Grinch, a sand art station, two toddler rides, a couple other snack stands, and the photo ordering stand.

Calling it a “Coney Island” carousel is false advertising at its finest and an insult to the actual experience of Coney Island. It’s about 15 feet in diameter. The rides they have outside of grocery stores are more thrilling.

Everything is way overpriced and low quality. For example, I bought $5 slushees that were not only ridiculously small, but were only filled three quarters of the way. They were made with weird tasting water that overpowered the flavoring. My daughters took a few sips and threw them out because they were so disgusting.

I thought they were being dramatic until I tried them myself. Not sure if it was the hose to the machine or if they just used unfiltered water or something, but the aftertaste lingered until we stopped to get gum on the way back home. Pretty hard to screw up flavored sugar water, but somehow this place managed to do so.

Once you leave that room you enter a flea market area before reaching the exit.

Wish I read the reviews beforehand. One and done. Wouldn’t even go back if it was free admission and everything was...

We arrived at 5:45 for the 6pm magic show, fully aware we would have to wait in line with ticket reservations, which I do not agree with. We made our way to the ticket window, purchased more tickets for rides and photo ops. We were then instructed to go right for the magic show. There were no other instructions or map given on where to find the magic show, the inside is a maze of attractions which is great and beautiful if you don't need to be somewhere for a timed show. I was expecting an auditorium type seating area given you needed to make a reservation for the show and the advertisement and marketing efforts give one the impression of higher end value and exclusivity. After racing around to find where we need to be, we came to a very run down open space broken floor tiles, worn floor, little to no Christmas decor and large wooden crates turned upside down facing a stage. There was a mid size carnival roller coaster in that space as well. We arrived a little after 6 because we had no idea where to find the magic show. We expected the show to have started and we found nothing but an open magicians case. My mother who has trouble walking had to find a seat at the picnic tables provided and definitely not ideal for patrons, but these seats were open to everyone, it didn't matter we purchased tickets ahead of time. A few minutes went by and my 7, 4, and 1.5 year old became quite bored and restless waiting, no magic show still at 6:15pm. I took my 1.5 year old to walk around and came back around 6:35 pm the show at apparently started shortly before then. Also, the amount of people was just annoying. I knew people could purchase tickets and enter, but for only opening at 5pm and on a Thursday it's just a lot of people for lines and limiting the number of people on rides because of the numbers. Also, we never found the Grinch to have a photo taken. I will say the characters were gracious, friendly, and my kids enjoyed it very much. It's just frustrating as a parent for the things that could make it easier with the kids. Finally, the outdoor bathrooms piece is really tacky given it's an indoor space with indoor plumbing. Oh and I have yet to find my photos from my 12/22 visit that I was told would be uploaded after 30 minutes, I check 1.5 hours later and the following morning. Unfortunately it takes us 2 hours one way to travel, we will never make...

Wish there was more disclosure about this before we paid to enter. Let me start by saying the decor, details and scenes they created are magical. Staff members were incredibly friendly. My issue is with the lack of description. It's tough to anticipate what to expect when you enter the building because all you can see are a maze entrance, ticket booth and vendors. Be warned, everything requires cash. You can online purchase the entry tickets. We entered the maze, made our way through the lovely gingerbread houses and then hit a massive line that we waited in for over an hour. The only alternative to the line was to take an exit door that would have bypassed everything making our visit a waste of money. The line took so long because you are taken through various photo opportunities. We felt stuck. Leave and forfeit our money with no glance at Santa or anything else or wait in the extremely crowded slow moving line of families.We had our autistic kid in tow. Not a great fit for us. We weren't interested in pictures but, felt forced into taking them. My kiddo wanted to see Santa, not sit on his lap. Or next to Mrs. Claus, Elsa or anyone else. Pics aren't her thing. We felt forced into it not having adequate information from the website descriptions. PS you have to pay a separate charge for the photos at the end. We didn't purchase and had to rush out after living through the line. I know they have a sensory day coming up but, I question how the line situation will be different for that. Hopefully there is more thought put in than just lights on and low volume. It would be great if they had a separate path for those not interested in the professional photo ops so those kids can still see everything but, walk through a...