Santa’s Nature Reserve 2022 – Virginia Living Museum

This is the first year I have taken the kids to the Virginia Living Museum for their Christmas event and I am going to be going yearly for the foreseeable future. The display was incredible.

Entry to the event is with timed tickets which makes it a much more enjoyable experience as it is not very crowded.

The event includes a Storybook Village, Reindeer cookie workshop, Holiday Planetarium Shows (additional purchase) and Photos with Santa.

Once we arrived, we checked in and took a picture of the map and staff directed us to the start of the adventure.

The walk started off with hot chocolate and a display for pictures.

After taking a picture, we went outside and began the nature walk. The lights were simple but beautiful and it felt so peaceful.

We made it to the Dinosaur Discovery Trail part of the walk and this was for sure a kid and adult favorite.

The Dinosaur Discovery trail follow the book How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas? Each page of the book was enlarged and the dinosaurs were dressed up to go along with the different pages.

Austin wanted to have his picture by all of the dinosaurs because his current obsession is Dinosaurs.

Our next stop on the trail was in the Aviary. We were actually able to see a few of the birds resting for the night.

We continued our trail by going around the pond and making our way towards Santa.

Once we finished the nature trail, we got in line to see Santa. Luckily because of the timed ticketing, the line was not long at all.

The Santa and display were absolutely perfect. Beautiful lights and the Santa was fantastic with children.

On the backside of the building where Santa was located is the area set up for decorating cookies. I have to say, this was one of the most, if not the best organized cookie decorating events I have ever been to. Each person was given a cookie with a popsicle stick with icing on it and a bag and a cup of sprinkles. Each bag contained pretzels and m&m’s.

We had just as much fun eating the cookies as we did making them.

We did not do the Planetarium shows because they were the same time as our entry into the event.

We got back inside and the kids received another cup of hot chocolate.

We of course stopped by the gift shop. I got each child a lapel pin for their pin board, the Dinosaur book and an ornament for our travel Christmas Tree.

Prior to leaving the kids wanted to put money in the Coin Vortex Tunnel. Such a fun way to raise money, as the kids always enjoy watching coins with each one we find.

This event at the Virginia Living Museum was absolutely perfect and so much fun! We all had a great time and highly recommend it! I posted a couple of pictures on Facebook and several of my friends went based off of the pictures.