Elf Town

Gal44

Is Elf town worth a look? Iv a 6 year old, haven't heard any feedback on it yet

biko

Their FB page www.facebook.com/elftowngalway/
has some pics and reviews

iguana

I'm going on Saturday and will give an honest review here if that's not too late for you to decide.

Gal44

Thanks, I was a bit wary of Facebook reviews....

biko

It is the same people...
Tbh, facebook even show people's real names so they are more likely to be honest than anonymous user on a website like boards.

iguana

biko wrote: »

It is the same people...
Tbh, facebook even show people's real names so they are more likely to be honest than anonymous user on a website like boards.

It's to do with the page ownership. Lots of businesses delete bad reviews from their Facebook pages, while giving free tickets to people they know in exchange for positive reviews. Whereas boards.ie has no affiliation to Elf Town (afaik) so if a long term user posts a review the odds are that it's going to be more honest.

For the review. I really enjoyed Elf Town and will definitely consider going again next year. We came up from Limerick for the day and it was an exhausting trip but we enjoyed it enough to make it worth it. The Snow Princess, elves, Mrs Claus etc, are clearly actors so they do a great job playing their parts in the various rooms. All the kids get elf hats at the start of the experience and they put stickers with their names on them on the front of the hat, so when they speak to the elves, the elves call them by name and they do it very naturally. Parents also fill out a form with details about each child and that is give to Santa before you go see him so Santa knows little things about them when he meets them.

There are 4 Santas working at a time but this is managed in such a way not to be obvious. Not all of the Santas have real beards though, so if you want to see a Santa with a real beard (which we did) you need to specify that to the elf who takes your form in the final room where you wait to see Santa. (And you might want to double check by email that there will be Santa with a real beard working at the time you want to visit - I found Elf Town fantastic for getting back to me when I emailed.)

Tips: Go to the toilet before the tour starts it would be difficult to go back and go mid-tour. Bring a decent camera with a flash if you have one as there are lots of nice photo opportunities but some of the rooms are dimly lit. Try to go at a less popular time, we went at mid-day on Saturday and our group was a good size but I thought the crowd coming in at 13.30 when we were leaving looked bigger and I preferred the smaller crowd. When you finish the Elf Town Tour, there is a waiting room with some toys for the kids to play with (a rocking sled, bean bags, colouring, fusball table, etc) and a small cafe counter, we were waiting for about 25 minutes and our son was happy to play with what was on offer but some kids might be bored/frustrated.

The areas that could be improved are that the mulled wine/non-alc-punch the adults get in Mrs Claus' kitchen was pretty awful. So if you are looking forward to a warm drink you might be disappointed. The gifts from Santa were very cheap. My son is 4 and got a Lego clone set which I think was from Dealz but he was delighted with it. Some kids I saw got stationary sets which they didn't seem as happy with. Lastly, if you are getting an official photo done you need to be very on the ball with it. Any Santa I've been at in the last 4 years has taken a number of photos and lets you choose which one you want before printing it. That didn't happen at Elf Town. The one photographer does all 4 Santas so the process is very rushed. Our photos aren't great, my husband literally looks like a zombie coming to eat us in the family photo. So I recommend asking the photographer to let you see the picture on his camera before he leaves the room and re-do them if you aren't happy. We do have lots of great photos of the day but it was disappointing to not have a good one of all of us.

wily minx

I don't think a business can remove negative reviews on Facebook. They can be reported and Facebook can remove them if they have breached their rules. Or a business can remove the review feature on their page.