The Night Before Christmas ride is only open during Christmas. This Garmendale Engineering Ltd trackless dark ride is perhaps the most wonderful dark ride in the whole of the UK.
Superseding the Santa’s Sleigh Ride that currently rides at the park that operates all year round this very special and limited ride experience was introduced to the park in 2010.
It’s the first trackless/wireless transport system that Garmendale created and with the help of KD Decoratives the ride is beautifully themed to match festive specifications.
Sundown Adventureland pride itself on buying British-made rides and using British theming companies to complement them so Garmendale is a great choice for such a system.
The Night Before Christmas ride consists of 11 scenes involving moving animatronic figures, music, voice-over audio and more as guests travel through these varied pantomime scenes via the trackless system.
Bare in mind that this ride merely serves as a delivery service for guests to meet Santa. A whole ride experience dedicated to taking guests to meet Santa Claus in his grotto.
2022 saw the addition of the brand new Four Seasons Arena which houses the new entrance for the Night Before Christmas ride. It’s indoors, it’s warm and no matter the weather this truly wonderful experience will never be ruined by mother nature.
The ride travels along close to 65 metres of the track via a magnetic path, the car spins on the spot during two particular spots and passengers disembark the ride at the far end of the building rather than right around back at the beginning like you usually do.
It is here where you wait outside a wonderfully themed grotto before heading inside to meet Santa. To combat crowd control there is actually a room (Santa’s office) filled with 4 hidden doors so that crowds of people can be sent into each room to meet their own Santa.
It’s a simple yet wonderful idea!
Details of the child’s age and gender used to be sent to the elves’ workshop before the experience but that doesn’t seem to have been in play this year.
It would be nice to see that brought back in addition to the child’s name so that when you see Santa, Santa already knows the name of the child he is about to meet. It would be a really nice personal touch.
Take a look at the VLOG of Sundown Below featuring snippets of the ride HERE
