After one long year of being shut down, Santa’s Village is hoping to re-open its theme park this spring.
“Since the pandemic really started, we’ve been kind of stuck waiting,” said Jamie Hopkins, general manager of Santa’s Village
Last summer, Santa’s Village staff began corresponding with the Ontario government to try to come up with a re-opening plan.
“We were told yes, possibly, if the conditions are right; so we went ahead and invested in getting re-open, and then we were unable to,” Hopkins explained.
“We are kind of back at that stage right now where we are working with the province to get them to approve our re-opening plan.”
Back in November, Santa’s Village sent a re-opening plan to the provincial government, but they have yet to be given the green light.
“It’s a solid plan, it addresses all of the concerns about safety, protocols, sanitization, crowd control, and distancing. We just can’t get the province to agree that it can be our opening plan,” Hopkins explained.
“We aren’t suggesting that they give us the green light to open now. All we are asking for is that our plan can be approved to say yes that’s a good plan, and under the right circumstances you will be able to re-open, and we just can’t get them to do that.”
Santa’s Village is at a critical time where they need to be making decisions on hiring staff, training staff, putting money into marketing, and spending money to get the park open, which are all things they did last year despite never being able to open.
Hopkins says it takes staff six weeks to two months to prepare to open the Bracebridge landmark.
“We are just trying to get some assurance from the government that there is some light down this dark tunnel, and we are going to be able to open once we get to a certain level of caseloads.”
Hopkins says the lack of communication from government officials is frustrating, and it’s making it difficult for Santa’s Village to prepare for a potential May long weekend opening.
“We are one of the only jurisdictions in North America who has no plan. They’ve done it in Quebec, Alberta, Florida, California, but we can’t get anywhere with the province of Ontario,” he said.
“We would like to open as we always have on the May long weekend. As a seasonal business, we rely on every day that we could be open that’s available for people to vacation.”
Once the gates at Santa’s Village officially open, Hopkins expects the theme park to be a popular place for locals to stay-cation.
“We sense that there is a demand. People are calling, emailing, messaging us on Facebook, asking what’s happening? And unfortunately, we are stuck,” he said.
“People want to get out and do something. It’s known that there is going to be safe protocols in place to give people confidence that they can get out and go, and we feel that we are prepared to meet that need as a theme park now," Hopkins said.
If the park is able to open this spring, Hopkins anticipates it will offer the same experience that Santa’s Village guests have become accustomed to over the years.
“We would want it to get fully open so that we could give the full array of our product to the guest,” he said.
Hopkins also believes that Santa’s Village is capable of offering a fun and unique theme park experience all while keeping its guests safe.
“The distancing plan is something we have got, we can function at a percentage of our capacity, and we have ways we can control that with things like advance sale tickets,” he said.
“We have all of those things addressed in our re-opening plan to give the province the confidence that we have good controls in place to manage a safe environment.”
While Santa’s Village survived a year without operating last year, Hopkins is worried that another season in lockdown could put the park in peril.
“If we go through another summer like last, it would be very difficult to say that we would still be a vibrant organization that would be able to keep afloat,” he said.
“It would be very challenging, very difficult, and it would put us in a vulnerable situation.”
Santa’s Village also plays a role in the local economy of Bracebridge. Every year the theme park employs 260 people, he explained.
“It’s an economic generator from an employment point of view. In addition to that the people who come to Santa’s Village as guests are people who are also spending money in the greater community,” Hopkins said.
