Escape to the great outdoors by staying at Sun Outdoors Lake Rudolph in Santa Claus, Indiana. Voted one of the top ten favorite parks in North America and a two-time National RV Park of the Year, Sun Outdoors Lake Rudolph is the closest lodging and camping to Holiday World Theme Park & Splashin' Safari Water Park. Multiple family lodging options include 250 Vacation Rentals (Cabins, Cottages & Rental RVs), and hundreds of full hookup RV Sites and Tent Sites. Family fun amenities including Santa's Splash Down Water Park, the giant Blitzen Bay swimming pool, playgrounds, basketball courts, horseshoe pits, fishing, paddleboats, kayaks, gem mining, mini golf, game room, camp store, Blitzen Kitchen Ice Cream & Pizza, family activities, and much more. Sun Outdoors Lake Rudolph is the perfect solution for your getaway! Cabin and cottage rentals have wheelchair accessibility and are pet-friendly. These rentals come fully furnished and sleep 5-8 guests depending on style. Other amenities include a private bathroom, Wifi access, flat screen cable TV, heat and air conditioning, plus a kitchen with full size appliances, microwave, toaster, coffee maker, cookware, dinnerware, and utensils. Outside, there is a picnic table, charcoal grill and fire ring. Pillows, pillowcases and fitted sheets are included. Please bring your own top sheets, blankets and towels.
Star ratings are intended to indicate the general level of features, amenities, and services to expect. This property is classified according to Giata.
HOTEL STYLE
Mid-range
Great View
Languages Spoken
English
Location
78 N Holiday Blvd, Santa Claus, IN 47579-8500
Sun Outdoors Lake Rudolph
475 reviews
Getting there
Somewhat walkable
Places to stay are graded on a 0-100 scale. The higher the grade, the easier it is for travelers to find restaurants and things to do within walking distance.
Cabin was clean and decent on the inside, outside needs major upkeep. Would be nice in housekeeping could wipe picnic tables down an use a leaf blower on the deck.
Disappointed that the water slides in the campground are an extra fee...with what we pay a night it should be included
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Date of stay: July 2021Trip type: Traveled with family
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from MB SunRVResorts, Owner at Sun Outdoors Lake Rudolph
Responded Jul 13, 2021
Hello, We are sorry that you are disappointed but appreciate your feedback. We are committed to providing you with a great experience and hope you give us another chance in the future.
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We stayed in a cabin over Labor Day weekend with a family of four adults and two children. Which the cabin had accommodations for supposedly. However, the sofa bed in the living room was extremely uncomfortable. You can literally feel the springs poking you in the back all night long.
Secondly, the kitchen was poorly appointed with only four forks, spoons and knives, despite sleeping arrangements for six people. There were also only two spatulas for serving utensils and one small plastic mixing or serving bowl. There were, however plenty of plates and glasses and a few pots/pans but no cookie sheet or any items you could use in the oven.
Also, when we arrived late that night on the first night, even though there are two TVs, one in the bedroom and one in the living room, there was only one TV remote control that we had to share between both. The next morning, I called and requested a second remote, and had to call another time later in the day, and we finally received it around 9 PM that night.
These are all issues that I would think that housekeeping would/should notice, and make sure that the cabins are properly stocked with the right items.
My aunt and uncle, who were in the cabin next-door had many more kitchen supplies to choose from.
Additionally, at the pool area, there is a kids play area that includes a couple of water slides that you do have to pay extra for. My grandsons are 5 1/2 and 3 1/2. The 5 1/2 year old was old enough to ride on the 2 bigger water slides, which we had to pay $10 for a wristband for . Just for one day. Not the whole weekend. However, the 3 1/2 year-old was not tall enough to go on any of those and could only ride on the little slides in the toddler play area…Something I don’t think we should’ve had to pay seven dollars for a wristband for, especially when you’re paying $300 a night for a cabin.
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Date of stay: September 2023Trip type: Traveled with family
Room Tip:Remember to bring your own top sheets, towels including kitchen towels and blankets. We had read...
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from Island Marketing, Owner at Sun Outdoors Lake Rudolph
Responded Sep 13, 2023
Hi Angela, thank you for sharing your feedback. We apologize for the discomfort you experienced with the sofa bed and the issues with the kitchen supplies. We appreciate your input and will address these concerns with our housekeeping team. We apologize for any inconvenience caused and will strive to make improvements.
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Very easy check-in. We picked up our rental golf cart when checking in.
Very large spread out campground. We highly recommend renting a golf cart to get around.
Nice amenities. We were only there for one night so we weren’t able to utilize most of them.
Bathrooms were very clean and well kept.
The camp store was very well stocked and I appreciated that I could go get a fresh hot cup of coffee the morning we left.
The snack bar did close for an hour or so in the evening.
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Date of stay: May 2021Trip type: Traveled with family
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from MB SunRVResorts, Owner at Sun Outdoors Lake Rudolph
Responded Jun 14, 2021
Hello David, Thank you for your review! We love sharing our little piece of paradise with our guests and are thrilled that you enjoyed your time here at Lake Rudolph. We appreciate your kind words regarding our location and amenities. We'll look forward to seeing you again in the near future. Enjoy your day!
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We stayed from Monday to Wednesday. I brought my 16 yr old daughter and my 14 yr old niece. We did the Holiday World on Monday prior to our check-in at the Campground and will never go back to Holiday World...ever! The girls were excited to get to the campground and get settled in. I booked a Holiday Cottage and a golf cart. For our 1st time visiting, I'm sure glad I picked what we booked. The Holiday Cottage was perfect and newer. It was everything I was expecting. Due to Covid-19, I did bring a can of Lysol and sprayed every light switch, door handle, cabinet handle, remote control, faucet and appliance handles. I also brought plastic silverware not knowing how good the previous renter washed the utilsils. I absolutely loved the screened in porch and we were out there a lot. It was so relaxing and we were saved by the bugs. The floor inside the cabin could of used a better cleaning prior to our arrival, but a broom and dust pan were there. I didn't mind sweeping the floors as I found myself doing this a couple of times a day anyway. We did take our shoes off at the door, but still think if better rugs were placed on the screened in porch and inside the cabin, this would definitely help cut down on the dirt. The beds all had fresh sheets and smelled amazing. The queen bed is definitely a camper short queen. I'm 5'8" and I did pull the mattress away from the wall a bit to allow for more foot room. I sleep on a Tempur-Pedic at home and was worried about the mattress in the cabin. I absolutely slept like a baby! No complaints there at all. As far as the golf carts, I'm super happy I spent the money to rent one as I had no idea literally how big this campground was. We rode through the campground at night as it seemed to be the thing to do. We met some folks and everyone seemed to wave in passing and was really enjoying themselves. It was definitely worth it. I underestimated the golf cart decorating. We saw some of the coolest decorated golf carts and people really used their imagination! The sand volleyball court was fun and was given a new volleyball with a $10 deposit. The mini golf was always a hot spot and looked fun, but we didn't have the chance to play. The pool was always busy with happy swimmers. If I would have known how awesome their pool/water slides were, I never would have purchased Holiday World tickets and could of saved a fortune! The ice cream at Blitzen Kitchen is absolutely stellar! We will definitely be back and hoping to make another trip before the end of the year.
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Date of stay: July 2020Trip type: Traveled with family
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from Marion Britt, Owner at Sun Outdoors Lake Rudolph
Responded Aug 5, 2020
Hello Valued Guest, Thank you for taking the time out to leave us with a great review. We pride ourselves on providing our guests with a great experience and we're happy to hear that your stay was enjoyed! Hope to see you again soon.
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I have never slept on a worse surface than the 3 inch thick older than the camper mattress that was in this rental camper. I had to replace 4 light bulbs. 1 air conditioner blew hot air the other sounds like a jet engine turning off and on. Overall very poorly maintained. The exteriors of all campers were disgusting.
It’s too bad because this campground is set up to be one of the best I’ve ever been too.. but clearly unkept, understaffed, and Ill managed.
When you’re next to the theme park and have 2 peak days a week maybe spend the off peak days cleaning and repairing? Keep the stores / pools open after the park closes. Pool was closed at 6, and Everything was closed by 8pm Saturday Everything was closed by 5pm Sunday…
Consider staying elsewhere until they get this place figured out.
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Date of stay: August 2021Trip type: Traveled with family
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from MB SunRVResorts, Owner at Sun Outdoors Lake Rudolph
Responded Aug 31, 2021
Hello, Thank you for providing your feedback. Although, we wish that you had a better experience with us. It is feedback such as this, that gives us the opportunity to improve. We value you as our guest and hope that your recent experience does not deter you from staying with us in the future.
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The electric tent sites here are just about as poor as you can get. No dedicated pad, and in a hilly area. There’s almost no where to put a 10x10 family tent on many of the tent sites. Then once you do get setup you’ll realize you are next to one of the roads that leads back to the cabin rentals. This means you’ll have cars (quiet) and a horde of golf carts racing by. (No literally, we saw three races in the course of an hour and a half). These carts are loud and usually have folks driving on them with loud music playing. Ok not too loud, but when you are in a tent 20 feet away, it’s plenty loud. This continues on past quiet hours (which are at 10) on to 1130 or so on our Saturday night stay. So yeah, sites are poor, poorly situated, and quiet hours aren’t at all enforced.
But it’s not all bad. The bathrooms are close to the tents. They are relatively new and relatively clean all in one individual bathrooms with toilet, sink, toilet. They have a/c but have pretty poor overhead ventilation. Additionally, all of them were wet and dirty as there is no good floor drain in them.
All in all, it’s pretty clear that tents are an afterthought here. If you’re in a tent just go somewhere else. You’ll be happier and odds are the company won’t notice you leave with the insane amounts of cabin rentals, golf cart rentals, and rv sites. They certainly won’t notice the noise you might have made with the horde of golf carts whizzing around.
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Date of stay: August 2022Trip type: Traveled with family
Room Tip:Don’t stay here if you are in a tent.
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from MB SunRVResorts, Owner at Sun Outdoors Lake Rudolph
Responded Aug 8, 2022
Hi Jeff, Thank you for taking the time to review your stay. We are sorry that your site was a disappointment. We are happy to offer campers an alternate site that better meets their needs if one is available. We hope the rest of your stay was enjoyable, and we appreciate your feedback, so we can provide higher levels of camper satisfaction in the future.
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I’ve never left a review anywhere. We’ve had some not so pleasant visits other places, but this was the worst. Let me start by saying the campground is great! My kids enjoyed riding their bikes and taking walks. However, the kids driving golf carts was absolutely not safe. It was truly like kids were given a golf cart to keep them . The lodging, unless you have your own camper, is NOT!! I understand that we were camping and that doesn’t mean we are going to be staying in a 5 star hotel, but this was unacceptable. Not to mention for the $$$ that was paid. We accidentally booked a pet friendly cottage. Huge mistake, but regardless pet hair wasn’t the only filth we found in the cottage. The air vents, fans, and flooring behind the bedside was caked in dust, dirt, hair. The couch has been chewed up from previous visitors along with the flooring. When it was time for bed, ants starting coming out from the walls in one of the bedroom. My 10 year old son was begging to sleep in our vehicle. The cottage was sprayed the next day after I called and the smell of the surest was so strong. One of the beds only had a thin “mattress” laying on top of plywood and it was covered in filth. The other mattress was just as dirty. We are frequent campers and this was a huge disappointment!!
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Date of stay: July 2021Trip type: Traveled with family
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from MB SunRVResorts, Owner at Sun Outdoors Lake Rudolph
Responded Aug 3, 2021
Hello, Thank you for taking the time out to share your concern with us. To further discuss your concern in more detail, would you mind giving us a call? Our direct line is 248-208-2500, option 2. We’re available Monday – Friday 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Thank You.
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My husband, daughter and I stayed here August 27th-30th and I have never had a worse experience!! The 3 inch thick nap pad mattresses were the most uncomfortable, and we would have been better off sleeping on the ground.
We stayed in RV 273D and it, along with all the others, need to be hauled out and replaced. The bunk room where my daughter slept had water leaking and reeked of mildew. After the second night, the a/c froze up. After returning from a long day at Holiday World the RV was 90 degrees! I called and they sent the maintenance man down to "repair" it. He brought a heat gun, forgot an extension cord and had to go back and get it, came back and said he "fixed" it. We returned from fishing at the lake and it was still 90 degrees in the RV. I once again called and they said they'd send the maintenance man back down, but he never showed up. After about a half hour, I called back only to be told he'd left and wouldn't be back until morning to fix it. The time was now around 9pm and we were tired and there was no way we could sleep in a 90 degree camper, so they gave us the key to the RV next to ours.
275D was even worse than the one we were in! The slide out was almost falling off, the floors were squishy and there was mold/mildew all over the entire RV. If we weren't about to pass out, we would've packed our things and left right then and there. We ended up leaving at 8am the next morning.
We didn't get to use any of the facilities other than the lake, everything was closed by the time we got back from Holiday World.
For the amount of money we spent we expected the accommodations to be much better than they were. We will never be back.
Save your money, stay somewhere else.
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Date of stay: August 2021Trip type: Traveled with family
Room Tip:Avoid staying here
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from MB SunRVResorts, Owner at Sun Outdoors Lake Rudolph
Responded Sep 3, 2021
Hello Christine, Thank you for taking the time out to share your concern with us. To further discuss your concern in more detail, would you mind giving us a call? Our direct line is 248-208-2500, option 2. We’re available Monday – Friday 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Thank You.
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My children and I just stayed here for the weekend in unit 416D, "Holiday Cottage" for two nights. We were meeting friends who were camping in their camper and visiting Holiday World. I paid $250 a night, $564.79 total with taxes and fees, and I was very disappointed in the cleanliness of the cottage. First, when we got there there were dishes stacked in the sink, which I guess the previous guests had left and (cleaned?), but housekeeping didn't put them away. The most disgusting thing about the whole thing was that there was MICE FECES in the drawers where the silverware and cooking utensils were. How housekeeping could overlook that, I don't know... The next thing that was an issue for me was that the stove burners didn't work very well. I couldn't even get the back right burner to boil water. The others weren't a lot better. The can opener didn't work, and the hot water doesn't last long. When I washed a few dishes and my daughter took a shower, the hot water ran out and all the rest of us either ha cold showers or no shower. In the bunk bed room there was still a sheet left on the bed that housekeeping didn't take off. There were ants as well. The pull out sofa was so hard in the living room that the two teen boys I had with me just decided to sleep on the couch without pulling the sofa out. A couple of good things...the TV worked in the living room and the A/C worked well, as did the microwave. As other people noted, the golf carts are everywhere. We were unable to rent one as they were all sold out which kind of annoying for us since our friends weren't really within walking distance, so every time we wanted to go visit, we had to drive down to them and try and figure out where to park my Expedition. Only one car will fit in the parking area for the unit and the unit next door has to plug their golf cart in very close to where we have to park, so that was a little annoying as well. I agree with others that the camp store should stay open later. When we would get back from HW they were closed the first time and the second time we had 30 minutes till they closed. We didn't have time to try to the pool at Rudolph, but I heard their small waterpark was an additional fee if you wanted to use it, which I think is absurd given how much money we overpaid for our unit. Overall, my biggest gripe is that these units are way overpriced and management needs to take care of the mice/mice feces situation in the unit because that is disgusting.
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Date of stay: June 2021
Rooms
Service
Sleep Quality
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
We have been staying at lake rudolph for over 20 years. Started out renting campers but have been renting a Christmas cabin for the last 10 years or more. The first year was fantastic, but has continued to get worse. Last year we had to wait over 3 hours past check in time to get our cabin and the cabin wasn't even close to clean. This year the whole cabin smelled like urine from a pee soaked mattress that we had to take outside and leave until we were leaving. The cabin was also filthy, we had to sweep and clean the cabin and the upstairs needed vacuuming. We found dirty socks on the floor and they didn't leave us enough bedding for the cabin (sheets and pillowcases). We were ignored when we told about the issues so we had to go to town and buy cleaning supplies and disinfectant to try and get rid of the urine smell. $1500 for 4 days and we will rent an air bnb next year, it will be cheaper and surely cleaner.
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Date of stay: July 2022Trip type: Traveled with family
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from MB SunRVResorts, Owner at Sun Outdoors Lake Rudolph
Responded Jul 19, 2022
We are sorry that your experience was not up to your standards or ours. We value cleanliness and customer service and apologize for falling short on this visit. Can you please give us a call at (888) 929-7010 to let us know which cabin you were in and the dates of your stay? We would like to follow up on the mattress and housekeeping schedule so no other guests have the same experience.
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There are more places to choose from in the Santa Claus area.
ALSO KNOWN AS
lake rudolph campground & rv hotel santa claus, lake rudolph campground and rv resort, lake rudolph campground & rv resort
FORMERLY KNOWN AS
Lake Rudolph Campground & RV Resort
LOCATION
United StatesIndianaSanta Claus
NUMBER OF ROOMS
537
Prices are the average nightly price provided by our partners and may not include all taxes and fees. Taxes and fees that are shown are estimates only. Please see our partners for more details.
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Frequently Asked Questions about Sun Outdoors Lake Rudolph
Which popular attractions are close to Sun Outdoors Lake Rudolph?
Nearby attractions include Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial (4.2 miles), Holiday World & Splashin' Safari (0.6 miles), and Santa's Candy Castle (1.1 miles).
