{"id":23593,"date":"2015-11-16T09:35:55","date_gmt":"2015-11-16T16:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/?p=23593"},"modified":"2015-11-16T09:35:55","modified_gmt":"2015-11-16T16:35:55","slug":"backlash-growing-over-charges-to-see-santa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/backlash-growing-over-charges-to-see-santa\/","title":{"rendered":"Backlash Growing Over Charges to See Santa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some malls across the USA have beefed up &#8220;the <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Santa<\/a> experience&#8221; in their locations and have hung out a for sale sign just to see the jolly old <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/northpole-7\/\">elf<\/a>. The going for price for sitting on Santa&#8217;s knee in these locations is $35. And parents are outraged. <\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/life-style\/santa-claus-cherry-hill-mall-charges-35-article-1.2436269\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Philadelphia mall<\/strong><\/a> which offered <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Santa<\/a> for free last year is under fire this year for charging the $35 fee. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cDisgusting!\u201d wrote Alison Potter Bramhall on the New Jersey shopping center\u2019s Facebook page. \u201cYou are effectively telling less fortunate children that <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Santa<\/a> doesn\u2019t want to see them unless their parents can pay.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There are similar reports all over the country: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/news\/ct-santa-claus-visit-malls-charge-met-20151105-story.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Chicago<\/strong><\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pressofatlanticcity.com\/news\/ap\/new_jersey\/mall-requiring-payment-if-kids-want-to-visit-santa\/article_4dc99c46-8eed-519d-8772-5a07f1f8da38.html\" target=\"_blank\">Atlantic City<\/a>, Orlando, San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas and Dallas. <\/p>\n<p>This comes on the heels of a failed &#8220;Santa adventure&#8221; by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lohud.com\/story\/money\/business\/2015\/11\/10\/futuristic-santa-display-has-shoppers-saying-bah-humbug\/75474718\/\" target=\"_blank\">Simon Malls<\/a> that removed <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> trees and the familiar trappings of <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> surrounding their <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Santa<\/a> and put him in an ice cave with high priced packages for photos.  <\/p>\n<p>A similar movement online exists for websites that charge outrageous fees to connect with <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Santa<\/a> Claus. The usual <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Santa<\/a> letter sites are out there but this year there is a preponderance of sites that charge for personalized videos, texts and photographs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some malls across the USA have beefed up &#8220;the Santa experience&#8221; in their locations and have hung out a for sale sign just to see the jolly old elf. The going for price for sitting on Santa&#8217;s knee in these locations is $35. And parents are outraged. A Philadelphia mall which offered Santa for free [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":5,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,2],"tags":[436],"class_list":["post-23593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-features","category-christmas-news","tag-pay-to-see-santa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}