Wirral Santa's Grotto: Gordale £8.50, Floral Pavilion £22

If you are searching for Santa in Wirral out of habit, start with the bad news, because the place most families booked has stopped.

The Church Farm Santa Experience at Thurstaston will not run again. Not this year, not any year. The farm’s own page says so plainly: “we can confirm that the Santa Experience will not be running again”, after twenty years of it. The rest of this page is what is left, with dates, times and prices verified against each venue’s own booking system on 6 September.

Updated 28 October: Gordale’s charity grotto is on sale for 2026, 28 November to 23 December, £8.50 a child and £1 an adult. The Floral Pavilion has dropped six Storytime with Santa sittings, leaving 64 (details below). Winter Wonderland Wirral’s grotto in Birkenhead Park, 9 to 13 December, costs £21.95 a child plus a 69p fee on top of £7 entry; a free meet and greet runs at the Wednesday quiet session. Details below.

Updated 7 October: Winter Wonderland Wirral, new this year in Birkenhead Park from 10 to 13 December, lists a Santa’s grotto; entry is £6 plus a £1 booking fee, and it does not yet say whether the grotto costs extra.

What happened at Church Farm

Two separate decisions, four months apart.

Church Farm Park closed on 4 June 2025, after more than twenty years. That ended the tractor rides, farm parties, school visits, pumpkin picking, the Easter egg hunt and the Family Fright Festival. Most of the animals were rehomed. At the time the farm said the Santa Experience and the Christmas tree sales would carry on.

Then the Santa Experience went too. On 15 June 2025 the booking page still read “FULLY-BOOKED for 2024” and promised “Tickets for 2025 should go on sale on Friday 29 August 2025”. By 13 September 2025 that text had been replaced with the closure notice that is still there today. The reason given is the burial ground on the same site:

As our award-winning burial ground Forget Me Not Fields has become busier we don’t have the time to make The Santa Experience as magical as usual. It wouldn’t be fair to sell tickets to an event which we aren’t able to devote enough time and resources to.

So the last Church Farm Santa Experience was in 2024. The archived page shows that season opening on Saturday 30 November and Sunday 1 December at £16 a child, for a sixty-minute walk round the farm with elves, real reindeer and a personalised visit.

One thing does continue. Christmas tree sales are still on at Church Farm, with over 13,000 growing trees and no booking needed. Check the dates before you drive over: the tree page still carries last season’s headline, “Christmas tree sales are OPEN FOR 2025”, with a Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm pattern running Sat 22 Nov to Sat 13 Dec. That is the 2025 window, not a 2026 promise.

The Floral Pavilion, New Brighton

The main grotto-style event left inside the borough, and the only Wirral one with 2026 dates already on sale.

Storytime with Santa runs Friday 11 December to Thursday 24 December 2026, every single day, in the Blue Lounge at the Floral Pavilion on Marine Promenade.

The £22 is a child ticket that carries the adults with it, so a parent and grandparent come free. The theatre’s box office record adds a line the website does not print: “No further adults permitted.” A third adult cannot be added, and there is no members or group discount on this show.

Every child talks to Santa, gives him their Christmas wishes and receives a festive gift, and the theatre says there are “plenty of photo opportunities”. It is billed as the fifteenth year of the show.

When we read the venue’s live ticketing data on 6 September it listed 70 sittings. On 28 October it lists 64: the 4.30pm sitting has gone from Friday 11 to Sunday 13 December and the 10am sitting from Wednesday 16 to Friday 18 December, on both the booking system and the public page. The theatre has not said why. All 64 remaining sittings are on sale and none is cancelled. Note that the public event page was showing a “coming soon” style status against the individual times even though general sale opened back in May, so if the buttons look inactive, ring the box office rather than assuming it has sold out.

Ness Botanic Gardens, just over the boundary

Cheaper, smaller, and the closest thing to a traditional grotto with confirmed 2026 dates. Storytime with Father Christmas at Ness runs on Sunday 6 and Sunday 13 December 2026, with three 45-minute sessions each day at 10.00, 12.00 and 14.00.

Places are capped at 20 children per session, and the price is £9.50 per child, which includes a gift to take home and that child’s admission to the gardens for the day. Each child gets a chat and a photo, and the gardens invite children to bring a letter or a list on the day.

Ness is at Neston, postcode CH64, which puts it just outside Wirral borough in Cheshire West and Chester. For most of the south of the peninsula it is closer than New Brighton.

Gordale, Burton

Gordale Garden & Home Centre on Chester High Road at Burton runs a Charity Santa’s Grotto for the Hospice of the Good Shepherd in Chester, which it says raised £38,897.86 in its last season. There is also a model Christmas village and weekday shopping until 9pm through December.

The 2026 grotto is on sale. Gordale’s own listing gives the details (Charity Santa’s Grotto 2026, Gordale):

All of the ticket price goes to the Hospice of the Good Shepherd. That makes it the cheapest bookable grotto on this page: two adults and two children pay £19. Gordale also runs a separate Storytime with Santa for pre-school children on Monday 7, Friday 11 and Tuesday 15 December, £12.50 a child and £1 an adult, with a drink and biscuit first (Gordale). Gordale is CH64, just outside the borough.

West Kirby’s Winter Wonderland

Saturday 21 November, West Kirby Grammar School, inside the school’s free Christmas fair (10am to 3pm). The grotto is a 45-minute visit with a Christmas story, crafts and colouring, then Santa, and every child gets a selection box. It sold out in 2025 and the school strongly recommends booking ahead; under-10s must be with a parent or carer. The price is on the school’s TicketSource booking page, which we could not read (West Kirby Grammar School).

The free option

Birkenhead Market put a free Santa’s grotto with a free gift, 1pm to 3pm, inside its Christmas craft market last year, alongside free face painting and a free craft station. Entry to the market was free too.

The 2026 craft markets are now set for Saturday 7 November and Saturday 5 December, 10am to 4pm, but the market’s listing does not mention a grotto this year; its free family activities are “to be announced” (Birkenhead Market, checked 30 September). We are tracking that, along with Port Sunlight’s and the dockside market’s, on our Wirral Christmas markets page.

Winter Wonderland Wirral, Birkenhead Park

New this year: Winter Wonderland Wirral has a Santa’s grotto in Birkenhead Park from Wednesday 9 to Sunday 13 December. Event entry is £6 a person plus a £1 booking fee, under-1s free, and it does not cover the grotto.

The grotto is sold separately by The Festive Group at £21.95 per child plus a 69p booking fee, including a toy or gift and a chance to meet Santa’s reindeer. Slots are 15 minutes, 3pm to 8.45pm Wednesday to Friday and 12pm to 8.45pm at the weekend, with up to two children per slot, and since 28 October the booking page says each child “require[s] their own ticket”. Tickets are non-refundable; £1 a booking goes to Cash4Kids. On 28 October all 144 slots were still available (The Festive Group). The Wednesday 9 December quiet session also lists a free casual Santa meet and greet (Ticket Tailor).

What to book first

If you want a fixed date with a fixed price for the grotto itself, the Floral Pavilion is the only one inside the borough currently selling, Gordale just over the boundary is the cheapest, and at the Floral Pavilion 14 consecutive days means the pressure sits on the weekend sittings rather than the whole run. Ness has 120 places in total across its two Sundays, which is the smallest capacity here and the one most likely to go early.

Parking for New Brighton is on our parking in Wirral page, and anything shutting a road in the run-up is on Wirral roadworks and travel. If you are booking the pantomime in the same trip, the Floral Pavilion’s dates are on our New Brighton pantomime page.

Sources checked on 6 September 2026: thechurchfarmestate.co.uk and its archived Santa Experience page from June and September 2025, wirraltoday.co.uk of 4 June 2025, the Floral Pavilion event page and its live box office data, the University of Liverpool’s Ness Botanic Gardens Christmas pages, gordale.co.uk and the archived Birkenhead Market craft market listing.