Breakfast with Santa at Gloucester Wyevale

It’s no secret that I love Christmas. I love the build up to it even more now I have my own children. We enjoy decorating the tree together (and then I rearrange it all when the girls are asleep), watching a Christmas film all snuggled up in our pjs, and visiting Santa! I do try to hold off getting into the festive mood until December, but when we were invited to have breakfast with Santa at Wyevale Garden Centre last weekend, I couldn’t resist.

Gloucester Wyevale isn’t too far away from us, so the girls and I had already been a couple of times to have a look at the Christmas decorations on sale. There is a Nativity scene in the entrance with moving animals which the girls love to visit.

The Breakfast with Santa event started before the store actually opened. We were welcomed by a member of staff and then shown to our table by an elf. The girls were excited to see that our table was all laid out with crackers for all of us and a colouring activity for both of them. Crackers were pulled, Christmas hats donned and festive colouring commenced! We were also quickly bought drinks by a member of staff, which we enjoyed whilst waiting for our breakfasts.

The girls breakfast consisted of a sausage, hash brown, fried egg and baked beans. Adults have a choice between the mini breakfast of a pastry or bacon bap (which didn’t look that “mini”) or the “Great British Breakfast”. Rich and I opted for the latter. Rich had a couple of sausages, bacon, hash browns, tomato, fried egg, mushrooms and baked beans. I had a vegetarian version which had a veggie sausage, fried egg, bubble and squeak, tomato and baked beans. The food was lovely and pretty soon everything on everyone’s plates had been polished off.

After breakfast, all the children were invited to sit down for a story with a couple of elves. They then had a couple of very special visitors! Santa arrived first and then Mrs Claus followed a few minutes later.

Whilst the children were being entertained, staff cleared away the remains of breakfast and a gingerbread decorating activity was laid out. The girls were happily surprised to see a gingerbread figure, icing and sprinkles waiting for them when they returned to the table. Soon they were both busily covering their biscuits in as much icing as they could. Whilst they were doing this, Santa and Mrs Claus went round table-to-table talking to the children. This was such a nice idea as both mine are quite shy, and Emily is not generally happy about going to close to Santa on her own. She felt a lot more comfortable talking to him in this situation.

When Santa and Mrs Claus had been to ever table they went and sat down in their grotto. Then the elves invited the children up table-by-table to see them in the grotto. Emily was a little shy, but having previously seen them both, was willing to go into the grotto as long as she could cuddle up to Freyja and not sit next to Santa!

They each told Santa what they would like for Christmas and were then allowed to choose a present each. They both chose a teddy bear! Thankfully in different colours so we don’t have any arguments about which bear is which!

We had a lovely time at this event, and it’s a great way for the children to meet Santa. There was no queueing up like you get in a lot of places. There was more to the event than just meeting Santa, yet it felt quite relaxed. The food was great too. We would definitely do this again and thoroughly recommend a trip to Wyevale for breakfast with Santa!

The event lasted 90 minutes and you can either have tea or breakfast with Santa. We thought it was great value. It is £10 for a child which included the breakfast, activity and a toy. Our breakfast was £8 (with the “mini” breakfast costing £4.50). Take a look at the event page here. There are Wyevale Garden Centres all across the country, but if you are local to Gloucester, it is worth popping over there anyway to see the Nativity scene and browse all their wonderful Christmas decorations!

Disclaimer: We were invited to the event in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are our own.