By james art This year, Santa’s Enchanted Forest will not delight visitors with its “games, food, shows, festivities.”
On its Instagram account, the long-running Christmas theme park in Miami announced that it will not be returning for the holiday season.
“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,” the post reads.
No word was given on whether the annual event will return in 2025, but the post expressed how grateful Santa’s team was for years of support from local residents. “As you celebrate the holidays this season, we hope you carry with you the warmth of the memories we’ve made together. I wish you and your loved ones an abundance of joy, love and the special wonder that this time of year brings.”
It’s just another blow to fans of the seasonal theme park that has called Tropical Park home since 1984. After the county refused to renew its lease in 2020, Santa struggled to find a permanent home for his only Miami holiday entertainment such as Santa on a surfboard and his giant tree putting on a reggaeton light show.
Santa appeared in Hialeah Park in 2021, but the location proved cumbersome due to parking issues. For the past two years, Santa’s Enchanted Forest has been held on vacant land in Medley, near the Covanta waste-to-energy plant and the Medley Landfill.
And while Santa roamed the northern municipalities of Miami looking for a home, a new Christmas-themed attraction called Christmas Wonderland took over the original Santa’s Enchanted space in Tropical Park.
Read more: Miami already has two competing vacation theme parks. Here’s what we think of them
“We had a vision of what we wanted, something more along the lines of the kind of world-class holiday villages you see in Hyde Park in London and Bryant Park in New York,” Tony Albello, CEO of EngageLive!, the company that created experience, told the Miami Herald last year.
Last year, Santa’s Enchanted Forest filed a civil lawsuit against Miami-Dade and the company that runs Christmas Wonderland, which asked a District Court judge to revoke the county’s permit that Loud and Live has to stage the for-profit event at Tropical. He also demanded that Loud and Live stop promoting Christmas Wonderland as a virtual clone of Santa Claus. In that lawsuit, a judge dismissed a preliminary complaint against Christmas Wonderland, allowing the park to stay open.
Christmas Wonderland is scheduled to return to Tropical Park for a second year on November 14.