One of the things my research turned up when I was planning our trip to Finnish Lapland, was the SnowGlow Winterpark in Rovaniemi City Centre. It’s actually a football stadium that’s transformed out of season.
In a nutshell - when we got there it didn’t look as good as I was expecting BUT we all had a great time.
I don’t have much experience of football stadiums but I did go to see Take That in Bristol in 2024 and that was in Ashton Gate Stadium which can hold nearly 30,000 people and has loads of bars and places selling food etc. on the way in. Ends up Rovaniemi’s football stadium isn’t quite as big, and the eatery is a little wooden hut and the toilets are in an out building way out yonder.
We arrived at about 2pm and pretty much had the place to ourselves - it got busier by the time we left several hours later but never “too” busy. And it got better as it got later because whilst it starts to get dark at 1pm, the lights didn’t fully light up the night sky until later in the afternoon.
When we arrived we were greeted on the gate by a very lovely lady who told us, when she saw our tickets and recognised how one was ripped off, that my Mother-in-Law was waiting for us in the cafe. A personal attention to detail that made such a nice impact!
We’d paid about £30 each, and we were there for about 3 hours. Most excitingly for me (and probably why I liked this attraction as soon as I found it), I did orbing! Which has properly been on my bucket list for years! And it was much less hassle to do it on frozen ground than to worry about doing it on water and need a life jacket and all that jazz. There was no queue, you just kept an eye on when there was an orb free and then hopped over and got in!
The highlight for the rest of the family had to be the ice/snow slide - which I did do and it was good, but they all absolutely loved it, including my Mother-in-Law who’s in her 70s and my pre-schooler who had just turned 4. You basically sit yourself in a giant rubber ring and go down a steep icy slide (and hope no one is stood in your way at the bottom - my husband got a bit injured stepping infront of his brother who was hurtling down with no way to stop, in order to stop him smacking into a little girl who’d obviously toddled into the way of an oncoming ring!). They could not get enough of this slide and spent most of the 3 hours just going up the steps and down the slide. This was why we were glad we hadn't paid to queue for the Snowman World slide.
There was also ice skating, but as we’ve done that in the UK we weren’t too worried about doing it again - and the ice skates seemed to be wet on the inside.
There were also snowmobiles for the kids which they enjoyed… but the day before they’d been on a bigger and better snowmobile track at Santa Claus’ village so it didn’t excite them that much.
Overall, whilst this didn't look like the spectacular attraction I was expecting, we all had a really good time and it was very easily located on the bus route that runs through the city and out to Santa Claus' Village.
This article is part of my series of guides to visiting Finnish Lapland in Rovaniemi. The full series is:
- The Ultimate Guide to Finnish Lapland, Rovaniemi
- Scandic Pohjanhovi: a review of a Rovaniemi City Centre hotel
- Wild About Lapland bespoke reindeer sleigh ride
- SnowGlow Winter Park in Rovaniemi
- Santa Claus Village, Rovaniemi - a detailed guide
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