Before Christmas became Santa's life's work, he dabbled in painting, computer programming, and aeronautics, which inspired him to build the now-famous reindeer catapult. Sneak a privileged peek at Santa Claus's workshop with today's Groupon to North Pole Experience in Greer. Choose between the following options:

• For $24, you get a children's general-admission ticket (a $49 value).
• For $27, you get an adult general-admission ticket (a $55 value).

North Pole Experience shovels in family fun with an interactive trip to Santa’s toy-building workshop. Personalized golden tickets, written by Santa, arrive in the mail ahead of time to beseech young ones to visit the wintery world of elves. Ticket holders drive up the 8,500-foot White Mountains the day of their North Pole Experience, where they can board the Candy Cane Express for a quick transport to the North Pole. Once inside Santa’s inner sanctum, children learn trade secrets and build toys under the tutelage of crafty elfin foremanship. The intricate décor and extensive woodwork animates countless pop-up books and movies, allowing kids to live out their fantasies of the snowy holiday without the burden of submitting blueprints to the city council for a building permit.

After working up an appetite, kids can nibble on cookies and sip cocoa at Santa's Bakery before studying toy analytics at Elf University, which bests Harvard and MIT by boasting a 100-percent graduation rate. The experience culminates with a rendezvous with the Great Toy Distributor himself, with whom families can meet privately to pose for pictures and exchange humorous stories about re-gifting mishaps.