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| - Castle Noel is America's Largest Indoor Year-Round Christmas Entertainment Attraction.
That was enough to get me in the door, and I'm glad that I did!
Castle Noel opened recently in November and was started by Mark Klaus, who just happened to be obsessed with collecting Hollywood and otherwise interesting Christmas memorabilia. He gutted out a church in downtown Medina, and honestly, filled it to the brim with Christmas goodies!
I'd had some friends go to Castle Noel and they all loved it. Christmas fun is few and far between in the Cleveland area, so I was excited to check it out. Of course, I waited until 3 days before Christmas and had no reservation. We drove down on a whim, stood outside for about 20 minutes (they go in groups, 15 minutes apart) and then got inside in the gift shop. The gift shop was another waiting area almost, as we had to wait in a long line for a very slow, but trying old lady to ring us up. Oh, and then there was another waiting room. We stood between the line ropes in that room for another 30 minutes or so? Yay! Then we got into another waiting room! We sat in pews and then got escorted into the Castle. Whole thing took 1 hour, 22 minutes of waiting. Like I said though, we had no reservations and were down on a VERY busy day. My friend who'd gone before had much less waiting, which was good because we all agreed that the long wait absolutely detracted from the emporium.
So here we go, after a quick intro on the whats and whys of Castle Noel, we saw Cousin Eddie's RV from National Lampoons Vacation and then entered into the Castle. The first gathering were Hollywood Memorabilia - framed pictures and such and then we went to the "I had that" which were VERY nicely displayed vintage games and toys. They're still working on a few things, but my favorite things were seeing some of the old Christmas movie props (Elf, The Kranks, etc.) and I ABSOLUTELY loved the NY City Christmas displays. The big finale was the main room where the Grinche's sleigh (and lots of other grinchy stuff) sat round the big Christmas Story mountain and slide. Santa was at the top for pictures and they took pictures on the way down too.
Overall, I loved it! It was great. I'm sure some kinks will be worked out (ahem, you don't need all those tour guides, you DO need some info plaques), and this will be a real highlight to the Christmas season. I also loved the experiential things (Blizzard Vortex/Christmas Chimney) and hope they add more things like that for the kids to play with along the way. Everything was high end and done VERY nicely.
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