Arcandia – Arctic Adventure Park Review, Lapland

We have recently returned from an amazing DIY Christmas trip to Lapland having had such a wonderfully, magical time and one of my favourite days had to be our visit to the Arcandia – Arctic Adventure Park. Packed full of stunning movie set buildings, beautiful lights, family games, sledging, entertainment and more, this was a day out that we all really enjoyed so I thought I would write a little review about it.

About Arcandia

This piece of magic, hidden within the fells of Levi, was purpose-built in 2009 to provide the location for a film called Nicholas North. Unfortunately, the film never got produced and the set was abandoned, leaving it abandoned for years. In 2019, the area was bought up by a local entrepreneur who had big visions for this lost village and she quickly turned it into the adventure park it is today, attracting those who love a little bit of fantasy, magic and action.

Booking Arcandia

My husband stumbled across this gem whilst he was doing some last minute research for our (very last minute) trip and as soon as we watched the promotional video we knew this had to be included in our itinerary. We booked directly with Arcadia via their website around 2 weeks before we went. The website does state that pre-booking is essential and this should be done at least 48 hours before your visit. There are 2 options when booking – Daylight and Darkness. Daylight is open from 11 am – 2 pm which is a Christmas program full of elves and Santa. We opted for Darkness (from 3 pm – 10 pm) so we could enjoy all of the park’s adventures along with the stunning lights. When clicking on their website for this you need to select park side and then choose from a park ticket or adventure ticket. We chose an adventure ticket so we had all we needed (Arcandia coins used for paying within the park and some other goodies) as soon as we arrived. My husband also added the magician show on top.

Arrival

The adventure park was around 55 minutes from our holiday cabin in Äkäslompolo but as we had a hire car this was a straightforward journey that we did in good time. The park was strict on opening at 3 pm so we waited outside the entrance for a short time until they allowed us in. Once in we queued to get our kit with our coins and goodies inside and we found the staff to all be friendly, helpful and informative.

Into The Adventure Park!

We were given a map on arrival and even though this looked quite small, we quickly found out that this didn’t mean you would get around it all. We had guesstimated that we would need around 2 hours… Haha, nope! We were there over 5 hours and still didn’t get everything done.

Upon entry we were immediately wowed by the stunning wooden buildings and lights. It is like nothing we had ever seen before and it really did feel like we were in a movie. After a little look around and picture taking in this area we ventured a little further in.

We headed up the path of light, across the bridge of destiny (sound like Elf here!) and into the Shaman Village.

We were greeted by a member of staff who was happy to explain how the games and costings worked, what each building was, even showing us inside the bar where the magician show would take place.

Here we looked around the museum, had a go at axe throwing (suitable for all ages as they have children’s axes), tried out the compost toilets and queued for quite a long time for the children to go on the mini snowmobiles. There was only one in use I assume due to safety and even though it took a while to go on it made the boy’s day and it made up for the mistake I made about snowmobiles during our Search for Santa experience.

We then made our way inside to grab a warm drink and seat before the magician show started. It is a small building so it was advised to us by a member of staff to arrive early. Now I’m not a big magician show fan but my husband insisted we went to it and of course who was picked to help out twice?… Ahh, yeah that would be me! I’m not the best at being put on the spot and I was really reluctant to get up in front of everyone but Korkatti – The Northern Magician, quickly put me at ease and the card trick he did went smoothly. This act is different to what we are used to in the UK as it is all based on Shaman stories and mysticism bringing more depth and meaning to the show. During the card act, I had to write a gift on a card and he wrote something back to me which was the word Hope and he let me keep the card which was touching. He asked for volunteers throughout his act so do be aware of that if you go but honestly, everyone had a blast. My second dose of being a helper left me really baffled as to how he did it but I won’t spoil anything, I’ll let you see for yourself.

From here we popped down to the Hunter’s Bar to grab a bite to eat. There wasn’t much on the menu but they did have a soy sausage for me with potatoes and we even got to heat it up ourselves on their open fire.

We went on to walk the path of darkness, have a few games including archery and human snowball and the best part – sledging.

Overall Thoughts

Arcandia is an amazing day out for the whole family and I would most definitely visit again. We didn’t do a few of the games, laser tag, play in the snow corner or feed the reindeer so there is still more we could enjoy on a second visit. If you ever stay in this part of Finnish Lapland I would highly recommend this adventure park.

Pin for later: