Christmas At York Museum Gardens

We had nearly 54,000 people come through the gates of Christmas at York Museum Gardens and here is just a handful of some of our favourite photo's you've tagged us in, take a look and see if you are there...
We would like to thank everyone that attended our first year of the event #christmasatyorkmuseumgardens

Hello! We are open as normal today despite the snow. Make sure you wrap up warm and wear the appropriate footwear. Grab a nice warming hot chocolate or mulled wine from one of our vendors too :) It's sure to help!

We are open today as normal at 4:45pm. We hope you've all had a lovely Christmas!

We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a big thank you to all who visited and enjoyed the gardens so far. We are closed today but re-open again on Boxing Day at 4:45pm. We are open until January 1st.

A lovely review from Little Vikings - York for kids If you are still thinking of visiting, we are open every day (except Christmas Day) until January 1st :) https://little-vikings.co.uk/review-chris tmas-at-york-muse…/

A big congratulations to Simon & Nicola who got engaged this weekend :) Thank you for sharing some photo's of this precious moment. All the very best for the future.

Someone is going to get a big surprise this weekend in the gardens. Hmmm, who could it be. It's all very exciting!

We've teamed up with Minster FM to offer you half price family tickets. Visit the link for more info...

Congratulations to Alex Sutton and Clark Todd who also got engaged in the gardens this week :)

Romance is definitely in the air at Christmas at York Museum Gardens! http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/…/15714416.F estive_York_attract…/

The snow this morning made for a perfect christmas winter setting (even if it didn't stick around with us too long!) ❄️ We are still open tonight but we do advise you wrap up warm and wear suitable footwear #snowyday

Take a look as the historic York Museum Gardens is transformed into a magical after-dark experience...
BBC Breakfast News says “The lights looked absolutely spectacular” & “LIGHTS FANTASTIC” by The Press, York #ChristmasAtYorkMuseumGardens #festivefun #lighttrail

What better way to enjoy the morning darkness then surrounded by magical lights and illuminations. A great morning spent with weather presenter Matt Taylor and the BBC Breakfast team.
Did you manage to catch us on the tv or hear us on the radio this morning? Let us know by commenting below... #ChristmasAtYorkMuseumGardens #illuminations #lights #festivefun #yorkchristmas

Keep an eye out for us on your televisions this morning as we have BBC Breakfast with us #morningnews

A reminder that tomorrow night is 20% off for YorkCard holders for One Night Only!
On Tuesday 28th November, Christmas at York Museum Gardens and York Explore Library and Archive would like to invite all YorkCard holders to take advantage of an EXCLUSIVE 20% OFF on Adult and Child admission tickets. Tickets can be booked through our website or on the door using the promo code: YORKCARD20 Don't miss the opportunity to see this magical, after-dark, illuminated experience! goo.g...l/9EcJBW #illuminations #christmas #yorkcard #exploreyork
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The Magical, After-Dark, Illuminated Experience #ChristmasAtYorkMuseumGardens

See the Gardens light up for an unforgettable after-dark trail of colour, music and magical illuminations. Don't miss Christmas at York Museum Gardens. #ChristmasAtYorkMuseumGardens #festive #christmaslights https://goo.gl/5v6osw

We would like to announce the winner of this competition as Diane Quinn :) Congratulations! We will contact you with how to claim your prize. Thanks to everyone who liked and shared this post :)

We went at the beginning of December and absolutely loved it! My two boys (18 months & nearly 4) enjoyed wandering amongst the balls and pyramids, playing with the illuminated chimes and dancing by the disco tree. The projection onto the old abbey walls was fantastic, so captivating for everyone. My pre-schooler was transfixed. A beautiful, illuminated walk with loads of lit fire torches at the end and marshmallows to toast. There’s a couple of food and drink stalls at the beginning, middle and end which works well. Don’t expect an abundance of stalls as this isn’t a market. This place gives you a lovely snuggly feeling and I’ll be going again next year if it’s on.

We visited early December and I hadn't got round to reviewing yet. I'm really shocked to see the bad reviews on here. We had a lovely festive evening here. My children aged 6 and 7 loved it. The light displays are beautiful and there are so many different ones. The Santa visit bit was really sweet my kids much preferred it to a sit on knee chat like you usually get. I never found it too busy but maybe that's as we went earlier in the month. My one complaint if I had to make one was cost of food and drink there. Which was expensive...but you know what we just took our own and didn't buy anything. This really was a lovely festive night out. Don't believe the negative reviews.

We enjoyed our trip to the gardens Santa was so very accommodating the children loved the adventure I cannot thank Santa enough he took the time to read Em's letter and was very patient with her he made the evening for us.

The only criticism would be I feel that the children should of received a small present at the end. Also which is aimed more at other parents than the staff there is a route for a reason and the parents letting their children run riot and messing with the displays, barging into other much smaller children and he really causing a disturbance should be thrown out but all in all a lovely evening���

Took my 2 girls here and they loved it! Would say it’s a little on the expensive side for what it actually is and the prices at the stalls for food and drink etc are expensive. That being said it was a great evening, we just a few days before Christmas so it was really magical for them. Would visit again next year if the price was as steep

So glad I didn't listen to the really bad reviews.. we loved it, was so pretty got us in the Christmassy mood, loved the musical trees and the fire at the end.. toasting marshmallows on the fire pit and the bubbles were an added extra my lo loved.. yes food overpriced and the worst hot chocolate ever that was luke warm bitter for £3.20 so don't buy it, but all in all it was great, hope it comes again next year.

We visited last night and thought it was ok. The story projected on the wall was great and the kids loved it. It was all going fine until we got to Santa. This bloke looked like he had just been dragged off the street and could barely be bothered to talk to the kids, in fact he didnt speak to ours at all. The elf that was supposed to hand out sweets was too busy chatting to someone, not a paying customer by the way, just a friend, so our kids got nothing. Expected to find an authentic Santa not someone that could've just rolled out from a bar, disappointed!!

Very good quality displays and a lovely atmosphere, but just not good value for money. We paid £72 for four adults and two children (including a dubious booking fee) when we booked in advance online, which ought to have been the cheapest price available. All stalls and attractions were extra, apart from a photo with Santa who admittedly was very friendly and handed sweets out to the kids who were with us. Biggest rip off of the evening was being charged £1.50 for a marshmallow to roast over the bonfire at the end, for goodness sake take a packet of skewers and marshmallows with you before you go in! Only one exhibit was actually interactive, where you pressed different lights to activate some bells. Considering we were in and out in only an hour and a half I would not pay full price to see it again, despite what are actually well thought out and impressive light displays.

The lights are absolutely beautiful and there was a gorgeous atmosphere. However, £15 per person? Far too expensive! Then £1.50 for one marshmallow? £3 for hook a duck? £2 for a merry go ride? They should have been free for the price we paid, or maybe just charge £5 for entrance fee. I would love to come back next year, but only if you put the prices down. It's definitely not worth £15 each.

Got off to a bad start with disorganised entrance. We queued with our tickets only to be told half way through the queue that we didn’t need to queue, were told to go straight in by one member of staff then after much confusion made to reenter the queue, further back! Not much fun with an already impatient toddler. The lights were nice although the 12 days of Christmas was a bit pointless. Felt it would have been better if it hadn’t been so over crowded, had to queue to see most of the installations as well as use any stalls and paths weren’t wide enough so ended up walking in mud. Think it would have been more enjoyable if it was less busy but they had clearly oversold for this 4.45 slot on Saturday evening.

Before I start my review I just want to make it clear this based on paying £40 total for 4 adults and 4 children as we managed to get half price tickets with Minster FM. I would have scored lower if I had paid original £80.



Entrance looked fab as you walked in which soon turned to disappointment when we found a stall with Hook a Duck at £3 each and merry go round at £2 each, which would have cost us £20, instead we had to disappoint our children. Disappointment at the bar which cost £3+ for half a Becks.



12 days of Christmas section, pointless. Especially for the younger ones who can't read and just ran round.



The children did enjoy the colour changing Christmas trees, although thought they were climbing frames. And they enjoyed the light picture show on the wall, had to drag then away from that part.



After that they just ran through the rest until we met an elf handing out sweets and Santa. In the words of my 6 year old 'what is wrong with Santa, is he tired and being lazy'. Other than a brief hello, he slumped on the chair and didn't communicate with the kids. My 6 year old thought he didn't talk to us as we had seen him earlier in the day somewhere else.



Again ran through the rest until the joy of the fire pit with toasted marshmallows at £1.50 per marshmallow!!



So to conclude, did the children enjoy it, yes to an extent. Would I pay to go again, no!

A nice experience but no way is it worth the money. Father Christmas is pretty rubbish and looks like he has had a boob job gone wrong with what I presume is a football stuffed down his top and we found it bang out of order that we didn't even get a free marshmallow to toast for the £40 we paid to get in! £1.50 for a single marshmallow is daylight robbery. The lights were lovely but we wouldn't go again unless some very vast improvements were made!

Omg, way way overpriced, disgusting .£40 for a family ( glad I didn't pay £15 pp as advitised) to walk around it in 1/2 hour and that's been slow. Nothing spectacular only normal Christmas lights . I expected even better than Leeds lantern festival at roundhay due to images on facebook with sculptures, animals , and objects lit up out of this world ...but there's was nothing close. Kids would have got more fun driving up and down streets looking at decorations .we had only colour changing lights and trees and balls that changed colour .

12 days of xmas ? What was that!!!! Nothing but music and signage. No lights at all... kids never even noticed it and ran straight along .this was Nothing even close to the activity 12 days of xmas , Christmas experience at lotherton hall !!! Which was magical for everyone.

There's nothing for the kids to get involved with.

Building video image ..lovely but free to see in Leeds and Bradford events . There were no climax towards the end ...a man after talking with his colleagues saw us and decided to trot to his shed in case we wanted the stupid expensive Drinks .

We refused and went and had tea in York .

It will be fair to say we will not be going back again . The worse spent money I've ever spent. For the same price I could have gone to stockeld park for many hours with lights , activities ,magical experiences and lots and lots of things for children and families to do.

Absolutely over priced!! The gardens are very pretty but £45 to walk around them?!? Feel like I’ve been robbed!!! That didn’t even include a marshmallow to toast at the end! We had to pay £1.50 for one of those! For that price I did expect that my little girl would get a gift from Santa too! I think there is the makings of something really good here but it needs lots of tweaks! The price isn’t justified at the moment. We won’t be coming again and I would not recommend.

What an absolute joke this really was. Most households have a better light display in there front gardens than this and it’s free to look at there’s. £15 per person is extortionate, we all cued in the cold for half an hour then the idiots on the gates realised they didn’t have enough barriers to separate people so let people cue jump , when we heard a lot of people complaining as well we also mentioned to the staff and they just laughed it off. Lots of really unhappy staff and not accommodating people’s needs just spells out trouble , but tickets where pre paid so we carried on. Paths and walk ways were not even gritted so was like an ice rink, the most fun we had was watching people sliding about. Bulbs out on loads of lights, damaged lamps and lighting displays everywhere, a lot of the food/drink huts were closed. Some poor displays and walk ways were not clearly marked out and we and others found outselves walking around or over peoples graves . Yes this is true and just unbelievable. After this we knew it was just a poorly run setup . Just looked dead of life the whole place ideal setting with the graves I suppose . Iam sure the family’s of these people don’t find it as funny as we did .

Shocking display York well done .......

Very poor indeed. Very expensive and not what was advertised in the northern echo where it said children would be able to search for illuminated messages in uv light. Very expensive costing us around £40 for 4 of us. All activities were at an extra cost- even the marshmallows were an extra £1.50! What a rip off! The uv display at the end didn’t appear to be working properly and the some of the stalls in the courtyard weren’t operational. Many of the fires in the fire garden weren’t lit. There didn’t appear to be any uv face painting either. We are regular visitors to luminaire in Durham which is free and in my opinion much better than this. If your reading this and haven’t yet been I wouldn’t bother! �

Very disappointed, having visited other similar attractions in the area over last few years we were really looking forwards to this, I’m not sure who has organised this but I think it’s some sort of half baked setup, with a few B&Q lights, some disco balls in a tree and some rows of small fire pits,my neighbours have better light displays in their gardens, this is definitely NOT worth any where near the money charged.

Don't waste your money people, absolutely appauling, I've seen better lights in people's front gardens and they were for free. The pricing of this event is extortionate for what you actually get to see. York events are normally amazing and this is of very poor quality. If you want to see something worth £15pp go visit the magical lantern festival then I guarantee you wouldn't be giving this anything above 1 star. People work hard for there money and this is definately not worth our hard earned cash, we left with a disappointed 3 year old (now that's got to be an achievement).

As this is the first time of going here, I will say that I won’t do it again! There were some pretty lights, but nothing much I thought was spectacular! At £40.00 for two adults and a child, just to walk round some gardens and look at a few lights I thought it was massively overpriced! And then as you go round you have to buy food or drinks too, with the price you pay for the tickets you would have thought you would at least get a free small hot drink or even a marshmallow for toasting at the end, (they were £1.50 for one!) also two hot chocolate drinks were £6.00, a small tray of doughnuts was £5.00 and the chocolate was not even melted so had to just have a bit of squirty, ice cream chocolate instead! Put that all together with £7.00 for parking, and roughly around £6/7.00 for our petrol to get there and back home, it was a very expensive hour, for nothing much!

Definitely not worth the price tag, I expected more!

After paying nearly £45 for 3 adults to get in I was expecting a real festive treat. We walked through an archway to be met by some stalls selling overpriced food. I then had the misfortune of visiting one of the loos, smelly and dirty. The carpet on the floor was so sodden it squelched underfoot. If I thought things were going to improve from there, I was sadly disappointed.

Through to the 12 days of Christmas exhibit, which was 12 posters dotted around a poorly lit garden. The cases the posters were in were so fogged up, you could barely see them. On to some light up Christmas trees which changed colour which were underwhelming. The highlight of the changing colour orbs was a child projectile vomiting. Possibly caused by the disgust at the huge entry price. From there there was a mediocre projection display onto the ruins (this is what made it 1 star rather than 0), and then we wandered round some lit up trees for a bit (several didn’t work), some muddy lit up words and a frankly bizarre UV alien, before stumbling upon the most badly dressed Father Christmas you have ever seen. On through a light tunnel (probably bought from B&Q) and past a tree with a smoke machine at the base and disco balls in the branches. Then we reached the fire garden, essentially some flaming torches stuck into the ground.

At this point my spirits slightly lifted as I spotted a fire pit where people were roasting marshmallows. Went to investigate, surely after being robbed of a £15 entry fee we would get a marshmallow? Alas it was not to be - £1.50 for 1 marshmallow!!!!!! Quickly moved on, through an archway where there were a couple of bubble machines, then out the exit. All in all we were there for 20 minutes.

This has to be the most overpriced attraction I have ever been to. Muddy, dirty, broken and a total waste of money. Far from feeling festive I feel totally incensed at what a rip off this place is. Save yourself £15 and take a wander down any suburban street and look at the lights on the houses. They will be far better than this ‘experience’.