Santas Lodge

The most disgusting sh*t hole I have ever stayed in. There are hourly hotels with cleaner rooms and higher standards. The air conditioner is full of caked on dirt and dust. The sheets are stained. Finally to add insult to injury there was a cockroach in the sink. Will be posting pictures. Update: Complained to front desk. They were rude and acted as if it was no big deal. So one can only assume they are desensitized to the negative comments due to the shear volume of complaints they must receive. I’d recommend staying in a sewer next time you visit Holiday World as it will be cleaner, and the rats will provide better service than this place.

Room was not very clean (there was a clump of hair in the toilet). The breakfast only option was the buffet which was limited and rooms were not very sound proof. On the other hand the staff was very friendly and it was extremely convent for holiday world. I had a lot of fun but had to keep my expectations checked.

The room was not cleaned. We found old pizza in the fridge, presumably from the last guests. When I mentioned it to the front desk, they said there was nothing to be done. All I wanted was an apology.
The only plus was that they were the ONLY hotel in a 30 mile radius with bookings available tonight. (Not surprising).

Plus– convenient to Holiday World Theme park in fact the only hotel near there. People very friendly. Place is clean. Breakfast is fine. Good wifi speed and coverage for a hotel and free.
Negative — 1970’s lodge look and feel. looking run down but not in disrepair. No good restaurants in the area.

We were going to Holiday World but a storm was approaching so we decided to get a hotel and go the next day. This was our first stop and the person at the front desk was great, she said a room was available and let us check in early which was great since I had 2 youngsters with me. We were able to enjoy a long day at the indoor pool which was clean and always had plenty of towels. The room was clean and good for our unexpected overnight stay. We will be going back to Holiday World again this year and will plan on staying here again. Thank you

We have been here a few years in a row and this one takes the cake. The non-​smoking rooms reeked of smoke. Privacy is a major problem considering the incompetence of others late at night and early in the morning. Selection for stay is limited in Santa Claus, IN so it’s tough to locate an alternative. I would not recommend this place to others unless price is a determining factor over quality.

This hotel desperately needs to be updated, especially considering the nightly rates they charge. Thought we booked a 2 bed suite and upon check in, discovered we got a king bed suite with 2 pull out sofas. When we approached the front desk to see about another room, the first person we spoke to seemed to try to help and asked a manager about putting us in another room. However, the manager flat out said no, basically said too bad. The room was dated, essentially like something out of the 1980’s, down to the shower curtain. The bed was uncomfortable and to top it off, it was pouring down rain and the building had no covered entrances so we got drenched going in. Also, they give you «free» wifi, but no one was able to connect to it. They also closed the indoor pool for lightening, not sure why that was necessary. Glad we only had to stay one night. The only reason it got 1 star is because of its proximity to Holiday World. My best advice if you need a hotel close to the park is to stay in Jasper. Would not recommend this hotel.

The best thing about Santa’s Lodge is that it is located in close proximity to Holiday World. Also, the staff could give a 4 star hotel a run for their money, they are beyond great. The lobby is decorated in a beautiful Christmas theme and is very appealing, my kids loved it.
Now for the reason for the low rating. The room was small and did not seem clean. We actually went to the Dollar Store up the street and bought Lysol to spray the beds down. Since the room had a musty stuffy smell we also bought air freshener to make the room smell better. The bathroom was extremely small, toilet was dirty and did not have a lid. The bathroom had pipes running across the ceiling. When taking a shower the water would go from hot to cold constantly. I do not think the room has been updated since it opened. The comforters were really outdated as well as the carpets. The wi-​fi was very unreliable, and the television had only a few channels. For the price paid we expected to have a much better room.

On the plus side, it is a dry, cleanish place to sleep after a long day at holiday world. That’s about it for the plus.
Everything is outdated from the carpets to the beds to the walls themselves. Our suite boasted 3 beds (which it does have technically) the 2 full size beds are the smallest, hardest beds I’ve ever had to sleep on. The extra bed which was a pullout sofa comes with 2 flat pillows and a single blanket that is in dire need of replacing…
The jacuzzi is in the living area, which we decided not to use, as it is literally a foot from the pullout bed.
The on site restaurant seems like a great idea… don’t have to leave the hotel, so convenient, and even a buffet. We enter thinking we will all be able to find something to eat, it is a buffet right? Well the buffet contains less than 10 items, most of which are cold and not exactly tasty… After trying once for dinner and once for breakfast (neither of which is included in the $ 200 a night cost) we have opted to eat elsewhere for the remainder of our stay.
Staff is friendly, but kind of hard to find. If we need something, we have to trek the half mile through the winding hallways to find the front desk. At 8 months pregnant, this is not convenient for me.
So, basically if you just want to sleep and don’t mind shelling out some dough, this is the place for you. If you plan to spend time in the hotel, you may want to search elsewhere.

First off, you can’t beat the convenience factor to Holiday World theme park. For the hotel itself? I would like the positive aspects as room rates (which are reasonable), onsite restaurant and bar (they do an acceptable job at food service for breakfast and dinner). The bar is a nice place to relax and be social.
I’ve stayed at Santa’s Lodge every year since 1995. Honestly, the rooms are OK. Not great, not heinous. They tend to not have much in the way of consistency — some rooms are clearly nicer than others? My last stay here was in June 2013, and I have to say I was somewhat disappointed. The quality and quantity of the room towels seemed to have gone right down the tubes. Also, the room I had a bit of a musty smell to it.
Honestly, with some minor upgrades (new carpeting, new bed linens, and better towels), this would be a very nice hotel to stay in. And for the «family on a budget,» the quality is certainly something that would meet their needs. Myself, I travel for business and am accustomed to staying in Hilton Hotel properties on a regular basis. Santa’s Lodge is NOT THAT! So, take my comments appropriately (and with a grain of salt).
On the plus side, the staff here are SUPER great. They’re pleasant, helpful and accommodating. They deserve kudos, no doubt.

This time the mattress was comfortable. The staff is still terrific and the carpet still needs a good vacuuming. One thing that bothered me is that the pool never had pool towels. I had to go to the front deck and ask for pool towels and had to wait until they brought them to the pool. I don’t know what is so hard about keeping them stocked especially during the fall when the tourist season is over.
They also put us in the very back as far away from the front as possible. Not a big deal but you do have to walk a lot further to the front desk and the restaurant.

Location, location, location. As I lay awake at 2:50am because I couldn’t sleep on the rock hard bed, I just kept thinking, «at least it’s close to Holiday World.» That’s about all it has going for it. Crazy expensive for what you get (the next morning I quickly searched for accommodations at Disney World & found MUCH better accommodations for a LOT less) I tried really hard to be thankful that I could contribute to the local economy. THIN walls (I could hear a quite conversation in the next room– actually, I could have participated in it) HARD beds, 1 small, thin pillow per person, small bathrooms, shoddily painted, curtains to short to really keep out the light, no screen in the window… yep, that’s what I got for $ 166. I’ve been to Holiday World several times, stayed here twice. The whole family agreed that if this is the only option, we’d rather camp in a tent.
PS– oh yeah, the free wi-​fi… pointless.

The town of Santa Claus Indiana really doesn’t have too much to offer other than the amusement park, a couple of restaurants, a gas station and a couple of hotels to stay in for your visit to the park.
We stayed in Santas Lodge, and from the outside it really presented itself nicely, kind of rustic and log cabinish. the inside was decorated up for Christmas after all it is Santas Lodge, but I was actually expecting the rooms to be decorated up as well, other than a Christmas pillow it looked like any other ordinary room, nice but still ordinary.
we got a family suite, it had a jacuzzi tub in the room however we didn’t use it. the bed was comfortable, and I had no trouble falling asleep which is strange for me in a hotel.
there is a nice restaurant in the lower level of the hotel which we utilized for our breakfast, it was a nicely priced buffet with hot foods and a large selection to choose from. the eggs were awesome and the bacon was as crisp as it could be. The price of the room was a little high for what it was, but the hotel and the comfort was very nice. I would stay here again, however I would look for a lower rate, and just nab a smaller room.

Reserved a room with a few coaster buddies for the night before Holiday World’s first day open to the public for 2011. Booked the place because the rate here was fairly similar to that of other good motels in the region. $ 79.99 is not a bad rate for 2 queens… But be warned, that this rate will most likely be higher into the summer.
Having seen other reviews, I was expecting to take the place with a grain of salt, a place that was conveniently located right near Holiday World, and Christmas/​Santa theme, an on-​site restaurant and not many more frills than that.
One nice surprise was that the corridors and rooms got some remodeling, especially a new color scheme of something other than white walls everywhere. I also appreciated the free wifi, great considering the cell data reception in the area was poor. The indoor pool and jacuzzi was nice, and the pool water was actually warm! However, the space where the indoor pool/​hot tub is was kind of utilitarian, with a lot of «dead space.»
The room itself was OK. One thing I took issue with was the bathroom scheme — not so much that the sink is located outside of the toilet and shower/​tub, but that the toilet seat is of the commercial type, lacking a lid. I say that’s a pain because of a lid would have provided space to lay stuff down on, like towel or clothes, while in the shower. Also, the TV channel selection was lacking. Many of the channels were fuzzed out, and as an adult flipping through the channels on a Saturday morning (no kids in our group) thought it was crazy that Fox News was the only thing worth watching on it! Couldn’t find NBC nor CNN.
The on site St. Nick’s Restaurant had a breakfast buffet for $ 8.95. Thought that the food was good, decent for the money. But the dining room seemed to be a cramped space, especially with the group of loud-​talking girls that were eating at the same time, which made a conversation amongst young adults a bit difficult.
Overall, I found Santa’s Lodge to be a reasonable place to stay while going to Holiday World. You can probably find someplace nicer, or someplace that is a better value in the region, but this place isn’t a bad choice. If you’re going for Holiday World and/​or are bringing the kids, it’ll do. But it you’re looking for a romantic getaway, wanting something away from hustle and bustle, try elsewhere, especially during the summer.

There’s a reason there aren’t pictures of the rooms on the website!
My parents thought it would be fun to take a trip to Holiday World and then stay the night here to make it seem more like a «vacation,» even though they only live an hour away and could easily drive home after a day at the park. My wife and I currently live in Indianapolis so with making a three-​hour drive to Holiday World, it kind of made sense to us to spend the night there.
We got a Family Suite and, frankly, couldn’t have been more disappointed. First off, the immediate impression was how plain-​looking it was. The room probably had not been updated since the place opened, and didn’t even feature a Christmas theme (something you’d expect from a place called Santa’s Lodge, where the entire lobby is decked out in Christmas decorations). Also, a very strange and out-​of-​place feature was the jacuzzi tub in the main room. That’s right, as soon as you open the door to the room, you enter a large room with a TV, couch, wet bar, and jacuzzi tub in the corner. Awkward, especially for a «family» suite. Speaking of which, the room was advertised as two beds with an addition pull-​out couch to sleep on. The two beds were in the same room and the pull out couch was in the main room. Not really what we were expecting, having stayed in other family suites before with two separate bedrooms. My wife and I slept on the pull-​out bed and it was very uncomfortable. I barely got any sleep. My parents and little sister shared the two beds and didn’t seem to have any complaints, although they didn’t rave about it either.
The place seemed clean overall, although there was an old cigar on top of one of the picture frames. Who knows how long it had been there. The TV only had six channels, which wasn’t a huge deal since we weren’t there to watch TV anyway, but it was kind of annoying. Our cell phone signals were terrible, with my wife and I on AT&T and my parents using Verizon. Oh, and very importantly, the liquid bath soap sucked. I had to use half of the bottle myself and there’s no way you could possibly split it between four adults and a child.
One feature we were excited about was the indoor and outdoor pools. After a day at Holiday World (staying in the main park, not going into Splashin’ Safari) we checked out both. The indoor pool was full of teenagers acting crazy and splashing everywhere, definitely not considering the fact that anyone else might like to use it. An employee even walked through as we were in there witnessing this behavior and ignored them. It would have been nice if he had asked them to calm down so that other people could enjoy it as well, especially because there was a very large «NO SPLASHING» sign on the wall. We went to the outdoor pool which was much calmer, full of families and small children. Still, it was a little crowded and we didn’t stay long.
Finally, we forgot to put out «Do Not Disturb» sign on the outside of the door, and the next morning room service knocked at 9:00am for several minutes until we answered the door, then said she’d come back later. She’s lucky that I had just woken up a few minutes before that or I would have been twice as angry. Why attempt to clean a room when you know the people in it are checking out in a couple of hours anyway? And then for her to simply say, «I’ll come back later» as soon as I open the door upset me quite a bit. Why even knock in the first place? It was also obvious that she tried her key and attempted to enter the room several times and undoubtedly knew it was locked from the inside. I have no idea what she was thinking.
Overall, this place was most definitely not worth the price. You could pay half as much at another hotel and get a nicer experience than we did. We were incredibly disappointed and my dad thought it was such a waste of money that he was ready to just make the drive home that night and not even stay in the room. Please, please avoid this place.