A beloved Miami holiday attraction is skipping Christmas this year.
Santa’s Enchanted Forest announced on Instagram it won’t return for the 2024 season.
The family holiday theme park has delighted South Floridians for 40 years. For those who grew up in Miami-Dade County in the 2000s, the TV commercial with its catchy jingle was an annual earworm, advertising its erstwhile home “at Tropical Park off Palmetto and Bird Road.”
In its social media post, the theme park’s page said management will take this year to regroup.
“Santa's Enchanted Forest will be closed for the 2024 season as we reflect on four magical decades of cherished memories and plans for the future,” reads the Instagram caption.
READ MORE: Boca Stage's ‘The Last Night of Ballyhoo’ challenges German Jewish identity
The theme park has been struggling for some years now.
In 2021, Miami-Dade County declined to renew the theme park’s lease at County-owned Tropical Park. Since then, Santa’s Enchanted Forest has hopped locations.
The attraction was briefly held at Hialeah Park, a much smaller venue than Tropical Park, and was plagued by long lines and limited parking space for visitors. Families had to be bussed to Santa’s from a nearby parking lot adjacent to a Miami-Dade Metrorail station.
The holiday amusement event then moved to a vacant lot in the small municipality of Medley. The space was larger and had more ample parking, but had less notoriety and visibility than its two predecessors.
Still, Santa’s Enchanted Forest has remained for many a nostalgic symbol of the quirky, distinct way that Miami and South Florida celebrate Christmas in the subtropics.
The New York Times ran a feature story that called the theme park: “a touchstone where adults who came as teenagers now bring their children, and vendors run booths once operated by their parents.”
Without the “games, food, shows, nativities” at Santa’s Enchanted Forest this year, would-be holiday revelers can still attend Tropical Park’s alternative attraction — Christmas Wonderland — starting November 14.
