A full day in Santa Claus Village – a suggested itinerary

Planning Christmas in Lapland? Read our complete guide.

“What do we actually do on Christmas Day?” is one of the questions I get asked most often in the Finnish Lapland From Australia group. Everyone knows they want to meet Santa. Fewer people realise that Santa Claus Village is big enough and full enough of things to do, that you could easily fill an entire day there – if you know how to sequence it.

I’ve visited Santa Claus Village three times now, across winter and autumn and this is the itinerary I wish someone had handed us before our first trip. It’s built around how the Village actually flows, what needs booking ahead and where to eat without blowing your whole Lapland budget on one lunch.

A quick note before we start – this is a suggested full day, not a rigid schedule. Build in slack. Kids get cold, queues ebb and flow and half the magic of Santa Claus Village is wandering without a plan for twenty minutes here and there.

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Before you go – what to book ahead

Santa Claus Village itself is free to enter, but almost everything worth doing inside it needs a booking – especially in December. I’ve written a full breakdown of why you need to book Lapland activities in advance, but for a day at the Village specifically, lock in:

• Your queue time to meet Santa (more on this below)
• Reindeer, husky or snowmobile experiences, if you want one
• A table at Three Elves Restaurant or the Snowman World restaurant, if you’re eating a proper lunch
• Snowman World day tickets, if tubing and ice skating are on your list

If you’d rather not choose between Santa Claus Village and Santa Park, it’s worth reading Santa Claus Village vs Santa Park first – our advice is not to try to do both in one day. This itinerary is built around the Village alone.

One thing that makes a full day like this much easier, staying right at the Village itself. I reviewed a double cabin at Santa Claus Holiday Village following my autumn stay. I imagine that being able to walk back for a nap, a warm-up or a change of clothes between activities would make a genuine difference – especially with younger kids.

The itinerary, hour by hour

Morning – arrive early and check in for your Santa queue time

Get to Santa Claus Village as close to opening as you can manage. During busy periods, the first thing to do is head to Santa’s Office and check in for a queue time – you’re then free to explore while you wait for your slot rather than standing in line the whole time.

We were nervous about how our kids would cope with the wait, but the queue itself is part of the experience – elves wander along chatting to children, there are peep-holes and festive displays to discover and the anticipation builds properly rather than feeling like standing in a bank line. Allow more time for this than you think you’ll need, especially over Christmas week. Oh, and it’s free to meet Santa, you just have to pay for the photos.

Meeting Santa

When your time comes, you’re brought into Santa’s office for a short, personal moment – a chat, a photo. It’s a production line in the sense that hundreds of families move through each day, but it doesn’t feel that way once you’re inside. You can’t take your own photos, but you can buy the official one on the way out.

If you’re the sort of family that wants more than a few minutes with Santa, it’s worth reading about the more immersive Search for Santa experiences available elsewhere in Lapland – some families combine a quick visit to the official Village with a longer, storytelling-style Santa experience on a different day.

Meet Mrs Claus

Don’t skip Mrs Claus’s cabin. It’s far less busy than Santa’s queue and if you can time it right after her lunch break like we did you can sometimes walk straight in. It’s a lovely, lower-pressure festive moment for kids who found Santa’s queue a bit much.

Cross the Arctic Circle

Santa Claus Village straddles the Arctic Circle, marked with a line running through the Village – it’s one of the simplest, most photogenic things to do all day and takes two minutes. Get the photo with one foot in each hemisphere.

Send a postcard from Santa’s Main Post Office

Give yourself real time here rather than rushing through. Writing a postcard home – or to yourself, to open next Christmas – is one of those small rituals that ends up being a highlight in hindsight. Our boys thought this was genuinely special, more than we expected going in.

Late morning – reindeer, huskies or snowmobiles

You can’t book ahead to experience the short Reindeer safari rides at SCV. You simply show up, buy your ticket and wait your turn. There are two distances to choose from, 400m or 800m.

Snowmobiling at the Village actually splits into two very different bookings:

• Longer wilderness safaris (a proper multi-hour ride out into the forest, sometimes paired with a Village visit or a campfire picnic) need to be booked online in advance through the local providers. Go direct via the Arctic Circle Snowmobile Park booking platform – their Snowmobile Safari and Santa Claus Village Experience is a good example of what’s on offer – or compare against multi-activity platforms like Viator’s Family Snowmobile Safari, which runs group safaris out of the Village area and can work out cheaper or more flexible depending on your dates.
• Short track rides and mini-snowmobiles (quick laps for kids and families) are walk-up only – no advance booking accepted. The Arctic Circle Snowmobile Park office is open daily 9am-5pm through the winter season. You simply buy your ticket at the counter for immediate track access.

So if you want the full wilderness experience, that’s a booking to make weeks out. If you just want a quick lap on the tracks with the kids, you can genuinely decide that morning.

Husky sledding needs to be booked through the operators based at the Village and fills quickly, so this is not the one to leave until you arrive. For any of these, it’s worth comparing prices across Get Your Guide, Klook and Viator before you book direct – availability and pricing shift throughout the season and one platform doesn’t always beat the others.

Bearhill Husky (who I personally recommend) do run a husky experience from Santa Claus Village. I participated in one at their main location so I can’t comment on the ones at SCV. There is a discount code for Bearhill Husky bookings in here.

If you’d rather do husky sledding somewhere with more room to move, it’s worth comparing against operators outside the Village itself before you commit.

Midday – lunch

I can personally recommend three options inside the Village and where you land depends on budget and mood:

• The Christmas House, home to a restaurant, gift shop and cafeteria, with breakfast and lunch buffets available to visitors who book ahead through their accommodation
• The Three Elves Restaurant, in the reception building of Santa Claus Holiday Village – expect proper restaurant prices (our lunch for four came close to $200 AUD), but it’s a genuinely festive, comfortable spot and their outdoor igloo dining is a memorable splurge if you book ahead
• Loft Café, for something lighter – excellent coffee, house-baked pastries and if you’re feeling adventurous, reindeer salami. We sat on the snow-covered terrace balcony with hot drinks while the kids played in the snow below and it was one of the calmest moments of the whole day

Alternatively, there are a number of restaurants and cafes within the building with souvenirs and gifts,, as well as within walking distance of the main hub, including a service station serving fast food across the road. If you’re travelling on a budget, as we were, we packed our lunch and sat by one of the fires and had a picnic – it was perfect!

Whichever you choose, book ahead if you can – tables disappear fast over the Christmas period.

Early afternoon – Snowman World

If time allows it, this is where the Village earns its “full day” reputation. Snowman World sits right alongside the rest of the Village and includes:

• Tubing down the snowy slopes – easily the highlight for most kids (and most adults)
• Ice skating, gentle enough for younger children
• A wander through rooms based on the Ice Hotel to see the sculpture work
• The ice maze and ice slide

The best part of a Snowman World ticket is that it’s not a one-and-done visit – you can move back and forth between Snowman World and the rest of the Village all day, which is exactly how we’d suggest using it. An hour here, a break for hot chocolate, back for another round of tubing before the light fades. If you’re staying at the Arctic Snow Hotel and Igloos, your Snowman World entry is already included in your stay.

Late afternoon – shopping and wandering

By mid-afternoon, energy levels (yours and the kids’) start to dip, which makes this the right time for slower activities. The Village’s shops range from standard souvenir stalls to genuinely local, Lappish-made goods – the Santa Claus Office Gift Shop is worth a look even if you didn’t queue for Santa and it’s one of the better spots for quality over kitsch.

If the light is fading (which, depending on your dates, it will be doing from early afternoon), this is a lovely time to just walk the Village slowly and take it in rather than ticking off another activity.

Optional – the Santa Send-Off Ceremony

If your visit falls on or around 23 December, check whether the Village is running its Santa Send-Off Ceremony, where Santa departs by sleigh on his journey to deliver presents around the world. It’s not an everyday event, so build your visit date around it deliberately if you want to see it – it was one of the standout moments of our own Lapland Christmas.

What to wear for a full day outdoors

You’ll be outside for a genuinely long stretch of this itinerary, moving between activity and standing-in-queue, which is a different challenge to a shorter visit. Our what to wear in Lapland packing guide covers the full layering system for both adults and kids by age – worth reading properly before this particular day, since you can’t easily nip back to your accommodation to warm up partway through.

A sample full-day timeline

Use this as a loose scaffold rather than a strict schedule:

• 9:00am – Arrive, check in for your Santa queue time
• 9:15am – Explore while you wait; cross the Arctic Circle line
• 10:00am – Meet Santa
• 10:30am – Meet Mrs Claus
• 11:00am – Santa’s Main Post Office – write and send a postcard
• 11:30am – Reindeer, husky or snowmobile activity (pre-booked)
• 1:00pm – Lunch
• 2:00pm – Snowman World (tubing, ice skating, Ice Hotel)
• 3:30pm – Shopping and a slower wander through the Village
• 4:00pm onward – Santa Send-Off Ceremony, if your dates line up, or simply enjoy the Village lit up as the light fades

My final tip

If a day at SCV is on your list, don’t try to rush this. Santa Claus Village rewards a slow, unhurried day far more than a checklist approach – and if you’ve flown a very long way to be here, that’s exactly the kind of day worth having.

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