The cost of visiting Santa -Santa Village, Rovaniemi, Finland

Visit Santa Village, (not to be confused with Santa Park/Grotto also close to Rovaniemi, and offers a lot of attractions at a fee, on top of a 25 Euro entrance fee). The Santa village is 8km north of Rovaniemi, Finland, and 2km from the Rovaniemi airport. This is where Santa lives! But Santa wants some money…

Here are some of the expenses you can expect, because after all – and this is what they are banking on the tourists thinking – "when will I ever come here again?"

* Send a letter home to the kids from Santa. – 6Euro.

* You can't take your own photo of your meeting with Santa, this is done by the resident photographic elf, and the photo will cost you between 25 – 70 Euro depending on size.

* A DVD of your meeting with the Big Man is 35 Euro.

* Also while an elf chats with the kids you are offered discretely to buy a gift for Santa to give your kid. These gifts start at 15 Euro.

* Getting certificates attesting that you have crossed the Arctic Circle from the reception costs 5 Euro.

* Buy a nugget of gold together with your certificate from the restaurant and pay 12 Euro.

* The Christmas Exhibition, featuring 3 exhibitions of Christmas traditions from around the world. Cost 5 Euro, 3 for Kids and 10 Euro for a family of 4.

* Ice park, like a water park, but ice! With slides, ice burg, ice statues, and plenty of snow to play around in. Adults 12 Euro, Kids 8, family 30 Euro.

There is a restaurant or two in the village, so you can spend there too, and you haven't even started buying souvenirs! For this purpose there are at lease three souvenir shops, the prices do vary so look around first. I found that the one furthest from the village entrance was cheapest.

That all said, I do think it is worth a visit, if you are with kids, if you are not with kids, don't make a special trip, but if you are in the area, it is worth it, and "when will you ever get back there again, right?"

However there are some free things. Firstly entrance is free, so there is nothing stopping you from having a good look around , and there is plenty to see in the way of Christmas "stuff".

Meeting Santa is free, though at peek season you can wait up to 2 hours. It is a one on one meeting and he really does give each guest his full attention.

Open times open daily: in June, July, August and December 9 a.m.-7 p.m., other times 10 a.m.-5 p.m