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It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the Smith Haven Mall!
Christmas House, a holiday entertainment company which kicked off its first attraction in 2020, opened a new 10-room immersive Christmas scene tour inside the Smith Haven Mall.
Located on the north side of Smith Haven in between Aeropostale and Space Force, the new attractions created by Hollywood and Broadway set designers offer mall goers and Christmas fanatics an interactive experience.
Michael Dessart, the president of Christmas House, said the setup draws people of all ages from families with grandparents and grandchildren to younger couples enjoying a date night.
“There’s something for everyone here,” Dessart said. “We have rooms that span form traditional Christmas settings like the North Pole room where we make snow, to rooms that are themed after films like ‘Elf’ and ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Nightmare Before Christmas.’ And we have a Blockbuster room for a little nostalgia as well.”
‘Not just a selfie spot’
The average group spends 45 minutes to walk through the entire exhibit, but Dessart said people can spend much longer. Many guests even backtrack through past rooms to catch details they missed, from the hunched appearance of Buddy’s giant tree in the Elf exhibit to the Chocolate Frog card in the Harry Potter room.
While guests can take as many group photos and selfies as they like, some rooms practically demand them. Among other highlights, guests can pose in the illusion room as a massive Santa and a minuscule elf and become one of a half dozen family Christmas portraits that line a living room wall.
But as Dessart put it, “this is not just a selfie spot.”
There are plenty of interactive features for everyone who visits. They can sit on a sandy beach and play a round of beer pong (minus the beer of course), fly on a Harry Potter broomstick and even start a snowball fight with plush snowball.
“People will spend 20 minutes just in that room,” Dessart said of the snowball fight room, his personal favorite. “I’ve seen families from 4-year-olds to parents and grandparents all throwing snowballs at each other and it’s a lot of fun. The kids are laughing and the parents are laughing.”
To purchase tickets for Christmas House, click here.
