Short answer: yes, and the important part is that it is heated. Minneapolis in December is spectacular and it is also cold, which is why “drive the kids around looking at lights” tends to end in a thermostat argument by the second neighbourhood.
Our Holiday Light Ride comes in two flavours, and one of them is built entirely for families. Here is how it actually works.
Santa’s Nice Ride: the family one
The Nice ride is one hour, all ages, aboard a heated vintage trolley. You roll through some of the best Christmas light displays in Minneapolis with Christmas music playing and a live guide narrating — and along the way everybody votes for their favourite decorated house. That last detail is the one that hooks kids. It turns looking out a window into a competition.
Routes shift through the season so the trolley is always chasing the best displays, which means the ride you take in early December is not quite the ride you take a week before Christmas.
It starts inside a mansion, not a parking lot
This is the bit that surprises people. Every Holiday Light Ride begins inside the Pillsbury Club — the 1916 Charles S. Pillsbury Mansion at 100 East 22nd Street, an English manor filled with genuine centuries-old imported interiors and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Arrive early. There is a holiday market inside with handmade gifts from more than fifty Minnesota artists, dinner and appetizers if you want them, and rooms worth wandering through even if you buy nothing. Parking is free just across the street, which in December in this city counts as a gift. A good number of guests tell us the mansion ends up being their favourite part of the night.
And the Naughty ride, for when the kids are not invited
The other option is 21+, runs two hours, and is frankly a rolling holiday party: cocktails at the Club first, then the trolley, then Christmas music at a volume the Nice ride does not attempt. It is the one people book for date nights, girls’ nights and office parties. Same lights, entirely different evening. If that is more your speed, our best Minneapolis date ideas list has more in the same vein.
What to actually bring
The trolley is heated, but you are stepping out into a Minnesota night at either end. December normal highs in the Twin Cities sit in the twenties Fahrenheit and the lows drop well below that — the Minnesota DNR climate normals have the numbers if you like to plan properly. Hats and mittens for the small ones, and boots if there is snow on the ground.
Coming from elsewhere in the metro? The Metro Transit trip planner will get you close, though with children the free lot across the street is usually the easier call.
Build a whole day around it
An hour-long ride leaves plenty of afternoon. Our best Minneapolis family activities and best Minneapolis landmarks lists are the shortcut, and no child in recorded history has objected to a stop from the best ice cream and dessert list, cold notwithstanding.
If daylight is left, the Gilded Age Mansion Tour is the same departure point and a good pairing — we broke down what you actually see on it recently. Older kids who like a scare tend to prefer the Candlelight Ghost Tour. And the block-by-block guide to the best light displays is worth a read before you come.
Outdoors and free is also very much on the table — the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board keeps the lakes and trails lit and open all winter, and we keep a list of free things to do in Minneapolis for exactly this.
Staying the night
Families driving in from out of town have two good options within minutes of the Club. 300 Clifton is a historic mansion bed and breakfast in Loring Park with a garden hot tub and a genuinely odd and wonderful basement speakeasy. Oakland’s on 9th is furnished studios with full kitchens downtown — the better bet if you are bringing a crowd, or staying more than a couple of nights.
Book early. Genuinely.
The Nice ride sells out on December weekends, and it sells out earliest for the dates families want. Check the tour calendar or book straight from the box office. Bringing a bigger group — a school class, a whole extended family, an office — and private rentals are the way to do it.
Then all you have to do is get everyone into their mittens. See our full list of the best tours in Minneapolis if you want to make a tradition of it.
Keep reading: What are the best things to do in Minneapolis on a rainy day?