Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 2. There
is a lot of memorabilia from How the
Grinch Stole Christmas, including the
16-foot Grinch sleigh.
The wow factor is everywhere. On
the ceiling are thousands and thousands
of glass ornaments — around 100,000 so
far. Each ornament is glued and wired to
the ceiling one at a time.
Discover
Northeast
Ohio’s
“Wow”
Factors!
A
re you
“If you come here on
FAMILY TRAVEL
a fam-
a snowy evening with
ily who
lights on all of the old
— by Deborah Williams
can’t get enough
buildings, you have
Christmas? The place to be at this time of
arrived in a winter wonderland.”
the year is in a Norman Rockwell-look-
Klaus and his wife Dana own the
ing Ohio village, about 45 minutes south
largest private collection of Christmas
of Cleveland, where there is a museum
movie props and costumes. Visitors are
that celebrates all things Christmas.
invited to relive their movie memories on
The name of this amazing museum is
Castle Noel, a 40,000 square foot former
church transformed into a wonderland.
The owner looks just like Santa Claus
should look, with a bushy white beard,
and his actual name is Mark Klaus. He
bills his creation as “America’s largest
year-round indoor Christmas entertain-
ment attraction.”
Klaus checked out many places
across the country when he set out to cre-
ate Castle Noel, and Medina, Ohio fit the
bill.
“The Medina Square reminds me of
Main Street at Disney World,” Klaus said.
28 WNY Family November 2018
guided tours.
“We have millions of dollars in
window displays from New York City
and this amazing collection of Holly-
wood movie props,” Dana Klaus said.
Her husband is a well-known sculptor of
ornaments that he sold for years on the
Home Shopping Network. The couple is
dedicated to ensure people leave happy,
feeling the magic of Christmas.
“This is a labor of love,” Dana said.
“We are here working seven days a week,
year round.”
Right at the beginning of the tour
there is the actual RV from National
The area that displays enormous
glass cases housing the toys of bygone
eras is always popular. The two streets
of displays of award winning New York
City department store Christmas win-
dows span the mid-1990s to the more
recent 2000s. A highlight of the tour is a
wondrous room named The Grand Hall
of Castle Noel. It features The Enchanted
Forest complete with animated animals.
The actual car Jim Carey drove
through the town of Whoville in the Grin-
ch movie is here, and so is the life-sized
Grinch costume. Everyone is invited to
slide down a tall, long, curved red slide
just like in the movie A Christmas Story.
So far, the oldest person to go down the
slide was 101!
It isn’t all about Christmas here.
Downstairs, it is possible to play Alien Va-
cation Mini Golf in 3-D. Klaus sculpted,
painted, and created the colorful themed
scenes that make every room come alive
when golfers wear 3-D glasses.
Candles have always had a Christ-
mas connection and the place to go for
candles in Medina is the Root Compa-
ny that was founded in 1869 by Amos