SANTA’S Grotto opened this weekend at Paulton’s Park, but there’ more to Christmas at the top family attraction than just your visit to the man in red.

While some areas of the park are closed, there are still a lot of rides to go on, including all of those in Peppa Pig World.

A big advantage of visiting out of season was that the queues were short and, for some rides, non-existent – good news when you have a couple of excited and not overly patient children with you.

There are also some Christmassy attractions to help get you in the mood, including some beautiful decorations and numerous lit up Christmas trees, which really come into their own as it starts to get dark.

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Our favourite part of the day, which probably topped even seeing Father Christmas, was the Christmas show. This featured lots of Christmas songs, dancing, a seasonal story, some gigantic Christmas characters and, the biggest hit with the small people, some fake snow to dance around in.

Santa’s Grotto at Paulton’s Park is very popular and tickets have been selling fast.

There were a lot of people wanting to see Father Christmas, and it took more than an hour from when we joined the queue at our allocated time to actually getting an audience with the man himself.

Most of this was through a number of different fantasy North Pole scenes, featuring animatronic animals singing Christmassy songs.

Our children, aged two and four, loved the cute creatures such as foxes, a seal and penguins that they spotted along the way.

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Father Christmas himself was a delight. He took lots of time to chat with our children and put them at their ease and they were delighted to go off clutching the badge and ticket to collect their presents that he gave them.

We’re still only in November, but it definitely feels like Christmas is coming.