Museums and national parks and roller coasters, oh my! It’s always Christmas in Santa Claus, IN–but the area has a lot more to offer than just a jolly fat dude in a red suit. We spent just about five days in Santa Claus, and we probably could have stayed at least ten and not been bored! One of my biggest frustrations while planning to head there was how little information I could find online about the area. I found a couple of blog posts but they were outdated and not as helpful as I had hoped. So, here’s my tips, tricks, and suggestions for a lovely week in Santa Claus, IN.
- Visit Lincoln’s Boyhood Home National Park. This is a wonderful place to see and it’s right down the road from Holiday World in Santa Claus but it feels like it’s worlds away! It requires a little preparation. What you really NEED TO KNOW is that Lincoln’s home is nowhere near the parking lot. Do you hear me? It’s nowhere near where you park! You have to hike! Nobody told me this. I was not dressed for a hike on an 85 degree day. I had been dressed for six hours in the air conditioned car traveling down there. Wear clothes you’d wear to hike. It’s not a difficult hike, but there are some hills and some long stretches without any shade. It’s a pretty walk, and interesting, too–along the way you come across the burial site for Lincoln’s mother. Also, go into the main building (the one that is actually near the parking lot!) and have the kids sign up for the junior ranger program before you set out to the home site. They do some worksheets and hand it back in after the hike and get a cool pin.
At the original site of Lincoln’s boyhood home. 
Grave site of Lincoln’s mother 
Being sworn in as Junior Rangers - Enjoy Holiday World and Splashin’ Safari. This is one of the cooler theme parks you’ll ever come across. It’s group into sections by different holiday themes, so you can celebrate Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Fourth of July all in one day. What’s really unique about Holiday World is the freebies. Now, we go to Disney World a lot and we always end up spending a small fortune on drinks and sun screen ( I always forget and leave it in the hotel room and end up needing to buy more). At Holiday World, there are little stands set up where you can slather on the sunscreen all day long — for FREE. And drinks? Guess what? Those are FREE as well. What?!? And I thought maybe the free drinks would be hard to find or in weird locations but literally everywhere we went there was a self-serve drink stand set up with all kinds of options. And the water park, Splashin’ Safari is honestly the best water park I’ve ever been to–and I’ve been to a lot of the big ones. Holiday World is nice as well, although I’ve heard a lot of people claim it’s “better than Disney World”. It isn’t. It just isn’t. If your expectations are THAT high, you may be let down.
#cousins are off to Holiday World!
Pro tips:
Rent a cabana at the water park. It included a safe for our wallets and phones, shady places to sit, a table and chairs, a mini-fridge well stocked with bottled water, a ceiling fan to cool us down, and a great view of the lazy river. It also gave us a check in spot to regroup if we split up to do different slides. I had thought it was a waste of money at first but ended up realizing it was the best money I ever spent.
Give Holiday World a separate day from Splashin’ Safari. Your ticket gets you into both but there’s just not enough time in one day to truly enjoy both.
Beware that the park is VERY hilly. After slathering on free sunscreen, wash your hands before you try to pull your rented wagon down a hill. Your hands will be so slippery from the sunscreen and the humidity, you may lose your grip and send your small child barreling down the hill. Not that I speak from experience… Maybe I do. 😉
- Check out the Santa Claus Museum. You can go to the post office on the property and write a letter to Santa–and then at Christmas, you will actually get a response! It’s a cute little museum with a lot of information about the history of the town and, of course, Santa.
Writing Letters to Santa at the museum! - Enjoy a frozen hot chocolate at Santa’s Candy Castle. Seriously, it’s amazingly delicious. We may have gone back later in the week to get a second one. It was that good. The candy store as a whole is a lot of fun. There are cute photo ops and lots of candies that will make you say “I haven’t seen that since I was a kid!”
The candy of my childhood. We always stopped to get these on the way home from the beach.
We stayed at Lake Rudolph Campground in a fully furnished cabin. I still have mixed feelings about our experience there. It was super convenient and offered a lot of activities, but we learned a lot from our stay. If you stay at Lake Rudolph:
- Pack carefully. We stayed at Lake Rudolph Campground in a “full furnished” cabin. Only it wasn’t. There was no cookie sheet to cook dinner on (even though there was an oven!) and there was no oven mitt to take anything out of the oven. Santa Claus is a tiny tourist town. There’s no Super Walmart to save the day. Our only option was a Dollar General. They had everything we needed but it was super cheap, low quality. Nothing cooked evenly on my $1.50 cooking sheet and the oven mitt barely protected us from burns. Double check with the main office before you arrive and make sure they have what you need. Also, the one grocery store in the area is pretty pricey–it is a tourist town, after all. While there are some things, like milk, that you can’t buy until you arrive, bring as much as possible with you from home.
The cabins had a huge deck. We spent a lot of time out there! - Enjoy a lazy day by the pool. There is a nice pool available. There are also water slides that are available for an additional fee. The big kids took advantage and really enjoyed their time on the slides.
- Take advantage of all the activities offered at Lake Rudolph. There is mini golfing, story time, craft projects, an arcade, and more. One of our favorite evenings was the golf cart parade. But take note: you’ll most likely want to drive the kids to the various locations. It’s not a bike-friendly campground (super hilly) and walking is difficult as well because so many people rent golf carts. And the golf carts at Lake Rudolph are out of control–nobody obeys any traffic laws on them. It’s dangerous, to be honest. They go the wrong way down one ways, they don’t stop at stop signs, they stop randomly and block traffic. And nobody on staff does anything at all to correct this behavior. We decided it was better to just drive to the different activity locations. There was no way our kids could navigate the campground safely–and that was a bummer because two years earlier when they were (obviously) two years younger, we camped somewhere that we could just let them go out on their own to the craft building and the movie area and the sports spot. We just didn’t feel safe doing that at Lake Rudolph and it was 100% because of the golf cart situation.
Craft time! We made football pillows! 
Mini golf! 
They did a small version of Build A Bear at one of the craft classes. - Don’t drive from Lake Rudolph over to Holiday World. They have a shuttle that will pick you up and drive you to the main gate and at the end of the day they pick you up and take you home! It’s easy to use and we never waited long for a shuttle.
If you are looking for a fun midwestern vacation spot this summer, Santa Claus, IN is a fantastic place to be. Have you been? What did you think?