Virtual reality Santa experience review

Don’t let lockdown stop you from spending time with Santa and your family this year

Lockdown measures may have stolen the chance to see Santa in the flesh this year, but you and your loved ones can still pay a virtual visit to Santa, thanks to Power of Chi.

In this first of its kind virtual reality experience, you can pay a visit to Santa at his virtual grotto for 25 minutes, using up to 5 devices, entering a magical snowy wonderland, complete with elves. Thanks to this technology, you can bring whoever you want with you – even if you don’t live in the same house. The experience works on all devices and needs less bandwidth than a zoom call.

Guests to the virtual winter wonderland are met by Noelle the elf who will join you in a snowball fight, sing songs with you and get you excited as you venture through the Christmas trees to Santa’s grotto. Next, you have your chance to meet virtual Santa, tell him what you want for Christmas and make sure he knows you’ve been good this year.

Tickets are available for sessions from now up to Christmas Eve with the last session being 7.30-7.55pm GMT on 24th December. For more information and to buy tickets click here.

Lucas visited tonight with his friend Chanel. It is such a magical experience, especially as Lucas is in France and Chanel is in the UK. For them to be able to share the experience was wonderful.

When I booked the tickets, I filled out a form saying the children’s names, ages, what they like to do and what they are hoping for from Father Christmas.

We signed in 15 minutes early for our session which allowed us to enter the lobby and for the children to pick their avatars and type in their names. This time also let us check our devices which was good as my microphone wasn’t working on my laptop so we swapped to my phone.

Noelle, the elf met us and welcomed us and started chatting to the children. Unfortunately Chanel’s microphone wasn’t working but Noelle got around this by typing questions to Chanel and Chanel could type back.

Lucas found it easy enough to use the phone by pinching and scrolling on the screen to make his way around the winter wonderland.

Santa called Lucas and Chanel into his grotto and asked them what they wanted for Christmas and also said a personal message to both of them.

He then took them outside to meet one of his reindeers and showed them a pile of presents that needed delivering. He asked them both to think of someone and throw the gift into the air for it to arrive to that person on Christmas Day. After they did that, they could pick up snowballs to have a snowball fight. Santa also asked if they wanted to sing a song and Lucas suggested Jingle Bells which Santa sang with them.

Chanel and Lucas both really enjoyed the experience and Lucas has already asked if we can do it next year so it’s definitely been a hit here.

If you are still looking for gift ideas, check out my Christmas gift guide.