COLLEGE STATION, Texas – Some families who were trying to pay a visit to Santa’s Wonderland in College Station were frustrated as they got tied up in a major traffic jam that seemingly had no end in sight.
Some people waited for hours in a long line along the highway before eventually deciding to give up and head back home.
Wendi Dodson shared pictures with KPRC2 that shows a sea of lights leading up to Santa’s Wonderland on Friday. She says her family waited in the car for six hours.
James and Beth Cerone said they drove two and half hours with a car full of toddlers. The family says they purchased tickets back in July, along with premiere parking and a carriage ride totaling $362.51. They said they never even made it across the overpass and blames the business for overselling tickets, as well as a failure of planning and logistics.
In a Facebook post, Santa’s Wonderland said,
“Our Santa’s Wonderland team would like to sincerely apologize to guests that were negatively impacted by traffic delays on Friday, November 26th. There were 2 large unrelated accidents on the highway near Santa’s Wonderland that diverted traffic onto the feeder roads. This additional traffic combined with increased guest attendance, due to strong rain chances on Saturday, caused our parking operation to fall behind. Our team is taking steps to better prepare for and prevent this type of event in the future. Again, we sincerely apologize to our guests that were impacted by this situation. Our customer service team is working hard to help each impacted guest find suitable resolutions.”
That explanation doesn’t quite add up for Beth Cerone.
“We never saw any accidents. There was really no rhyme or reason to any of this backup. We were obviously on one side, Santa’s Wonderland was on the other side. We could see across the interstate to where we were going but we just sat and sat and sat like hardly inching forward every few minutes,” she said.
A worker from the business told KPRC they are working with guests and will allow them to come back to Santa’s Wonderland on a different day.