A Winter Summerland at Walt Disney World

By: Nick

You're in Walt Disney World. It's Christmastime. You need to escape the crowds. You could go back to the resort pool...again.

Or, you can do something different.

Miniature golf at Disney's Winter Summerland is an enjoyable respite. Located next to Disney's Blizzard Beach, this mini golf spot actually has 2 courses, one a beach theme, and one a North Pole snowy theme.

And, as you'd expect from Disney, these course are not only wonderfully themed but have an imaginative back story.

One Christmas Eve, as Santa was flying over Florida, he discovered a snowy spot in this tropical locale. After investigating this anomaly, he decided to build a vacation spot for his elves to enjoy on their downtime. A Winter Summerland!!!

Apparently some elves wanted to enjoy a more authentic Floridian vacation, so they built the Summer side of the course.

Other elves recreated a more "homey" course, complete with a, ski slope, ice fishing pond, a snowman, and even a snow castle.


My wife, friends, and I played the winter side. It is great fun, and there are plenty of surprise effects throughout.
You will also find a few of your Disney pals around.



Signs are at each of the 18 holes to give hints of how to play that hole, and give a hint at what effect you may encounter.






You start at Santa's "Elfstream Winterbago," a converted trailer home, gift shop and snack stand.



Santa even left a sleigh for photo ops! That guy thinks of everything.


This article was originally posted on the Tips From the Disney Divas and Devos Blog, where Nick is a contributing writer.
For more on Winter Summerland, please check out this great post from Gaylin.

Big Fun, Mini Golf

Guest Writer Wednesday
Big Fun, Mini Golf
By: Gaylin


In Spring 2005 my travel friend and I were leaving Blizzard Beach, I noticed the sign for Winter Summerland Miniature Golf and we decided to take some time to play a 'round'.

Believe it or not, I had never played mini golf before and don't play big golf either. Turns out that mini golf is a lot of fun. You have a choice of two courses, the Winter side, which is all themed winter and Christmas and the Summer side which is themed summer and Christmas!

We chose the Winter side and it was a lot of fun, 9 holes and all of them had some kind of challenge, slopes, moving pieces, lots of theming to enjoy.

This first hole is set up like an outdoors hockey rink and the hole is in front of the goalies net!

This is my lame attempt to get the golf ball int that square in the front of the toboggan. You might notice that there is no hair at the back of my neck, I had my head shaved a few weeks before that vacation, for charity! Being bald was the easiest vacation hairstyle I ever had!

If  I remember correctly, not only did you have to get the golf ball into the castle door, it had to go to the right spot inside to roll out to the right to get to the hole.

Next up, Mickey, Minnie & Pluto snow carvings!

This one looks like it would be easy, the hole is right in front of the snowman but the surface was rippled and that darn golf ball would not go in the hole.

This was by far my favourite hole of the course, if you got the golf ball in the right spot in the snow in front of the pole, the stripe in the pole is moving! It picks the golf ball up and rolls it up the pole and then drops it out the back where it goes right into the hole. I got a hole in one on this one, I was a very proud newbie mini golf player.

This was the only time we ran into the people playing in front of us, we slowed down and took some time playing around the candy to let them get ahead of us again.

This last hole was fun as well, the Santa legs lift up and down and you have to get the golf ball to roll under them at just the right time or it keeps returning to you to try a gain. Love the flippers instead of stocking!

I don't know how much time it took to play the course, I know we both had a lot of fun. I lost by a couple of points but didn't really care. Would I play mini golf again while on vacation - Yes! It was a great way to take a break from the theme parks, next time I will take more photos.

Next time I will try the Fantasia Gardens Mini Golf outside the Boardwalk Resort.