The Maine Agenda › Outdoors in Maine
Snow Tubing Near Portland, Maine: One Park Inside 30 Minutes, and What the Rest Actually Charge
Greater Portland has exactly one snow tubing park, and it is not at a ski mountain. It is at Seacoast Adventure in Windham, the same place on Route 302 that runs go-karts and mini golf in July. Every ski area within a two hour drive of the city either never built a tubing hill, tore its hill out years ago, or still mentions tubing on a web page while selling no ticket for it. If you have been assuming that Pleasant Mountain or Sunday River has a tubing lane waiting for the kids who will not ski, they do not, and their own sites say so.
That single fact reshapes the planning. Tubing near Portland is a weekend-and-vacation-week activity with sold-out sessions, not a spontaneous Tuesday. Everything below was read off each operator's own website on September 13, 2026, before any of them had opened for the coming winter, so the prices are the last posted rate cards, labeled by season where the operator labeled them. We say which ones are last year's.
Seacoast Adventure in Windham is the answer, and here is the fine print
Seacoast Adventure sits at 930 Roosevelt Trail in North Windham, roughly half an hour from downtown Portland up Route 302. Its snow park runs on 100 percent machine-made snow with a carpet lift, up to 10 lanes, 700 foot runs, and LED lights with music for the night sessions. The tube comes with the ticket, and personal sleds and tubes are not allowed on the hill.
The rate card posted as of September 13 is labeled 2025-26, and the page still carries the line "Snow Tubing is closed for the season." Treat these as the numbers to plan around until a 2026-27 card replaces them:
| Ticket | Price | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Single | $35 per person | Anyone 48 inches or taller, one regular tube |
| Combo | $50 per pair | One child 40 to 47 inches on a small tube, linked to one adult 16 or older on a regular tube |
| Student night | $17.50 per student | K through 12 and college students with ID, select Thursdays 5 to 8 p.m. |
| Late-season weekends | $10 off either ticket | All-day tubing with no time sessions, two weekends in late March |
A session is two hours. Tickets are sold per session, sessions sell out, and the last lift stops five minutes before the session ends. The posted rhythm is two or three sessions on Friday nights, five on Saturdays, four on Sundays, plus daily sessions during school vacation weeks and on holidays like Martin Luther King Day and Presidents Day. Last winter opened December 26 and the FAQ still says opening day is "scheduled for late December, hopefully December 26," so a Christmas-week visit is plausible and a Thanksgiving one is not.
The height rule is the thing that catches families. Nobody under 40 inches tubes at all, no exceptions and no lap riding. A child between 40 and 47 inches rides a small child tube that must be linked to an accompanying adult's tube, one adult per child, and the child has to be at the ticket counter to be measured. Double tubes do not exist here. Helmets are optional. Ski boots and hard-shell boots are banned on the hill, and a digital waiver, good for the whole season, has to be signed before you tube.
The purchase mechanics matter as much as the price. Online tickets go up one weekend at a time, two to five days ahead, and they are credit card only, non-refundable, and cannot be combined with any coupon or gift card. If you hold a Seacoast gift card, you have to buy at the park on the day, where the ticket center opens at 4:15 p.m. on Fridays and 9:15 a.m. on Saturdays, Sundays and vacation days. There are no phone reservations. The park is explicit that it is not responsible for weather and that a shortened session earns no refund, so check the forecast before you buy, not after.
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The closest ski mountain says it has tubing. Its ticket window does not.
Lost Valley in Auburn is the nearest lift-served skiing to Portland, about 45 minutes up I-95, and its website's own description, the text a search engine reads, says "snowtubing & Brewpub onsite." We looked for the tubing on September 13 in four places: the tickets and passes page, which lists lift tickets, a $5 Cub Carpet ticket, $12 Nordic, $15 uphill and $6 snowshoe passes and nothing for tubing; the site's own search for "tubing," which returned no page; the site's 80-page sitemap, which contains no tubing page; and the homepage, where the only mention is that metadata line. A tubing hill that exists in a site description and nowhere a customer can buy a ticket is not one we will send you to. Call 207-784-1561 before driving to Auburn for tubing. If you are going to Auburn to ski, our ski season pass guide covers what Lost Valley actually sells.
The mountains that answer the question directly: no
Some ski areas say plainly that they do not have tubing, which is more useful than a vague page.
Mt. Abram in Greenwood answers it in its winter FAQ: "Mt. Abram discontinued tubing operations in 2014." Titcomb Mountain in Farmington puts it in capitals on its homepage: it does NOT offer tubing or sledding, alpine and nordic only. Pleasant Mountain in Bridgton, the hill most Greater Portland families actually ski, has no tubing anywhere on its homepage, its winter activities page, or its site search. Sunday River and Sugarloaf site searches for tubing return nothing. Those last three are absences, not statements, so we are reporting them as what we could not find rather than as policy. Eaton Mountain in Skowhegan, which has sold tubing in the past, currently has a website that redirects to a domain-parking page, so we could not verify anything about it and are not listing it either way.
At about 90 minutes, the options open up, and one has already posted next season's prices
If you are willing to make a day of it, three tubing operations sit roughly an hour and a half from Portland, two of them across the New Hampshire line.
Cranmore, North Conway, New Hampshire. Cranmore is the only operator in this article that has already published its 2026-27 tubing rates. A two hour session in the lift-served tubing park is $49 for ages 6 and up. Ages 3 to 5 pay $15 and must ride a double tube with a paying adult 18 or older, and children under 3 are not allowed to tube at all. Night tubing under LED lights runs Wednesday, Friday and Saturday evenings from dusk until 9 p.m., late December through mid March. Tickets sell out at peak periods and go on sale online "this fall." The adjacent Mountain Adventure Park, with a coaster, zip ride and giant swing, is a separate $39 ticket.
King Pine, East Madison, New Hampshire. The Pine Meadows Tubing Park sells one hour sessions starting on the hour for $24, all ages, with a conveyor lift. There is no minimum age or height, but every rider has to ride alone on a tube. Peak-season hours are Tuesday 4 to 7 p.m., non-holiday Fridays 3 to 6 p.m., and weekends and holiday periods 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets are transferable up to 48 hours ahead but not refundable, day-of purchases are card only, and the resort says it regularly sells out. The page currently says the park is closed for the season and does not label which season the $24 belongs to.
Camden Snow Bowl, Camden, Maine. This is the town-owned ski area run by Camden Parks and Recreation, and it has two things nobody else within this radius has. The tubing hill is nearly 500 feet long and got multiple lanes and a lift in 2025. It is $15 per person per hour, sold day-of and in person only, in hourly slots from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. with 40 tickets per slot, minimum height 42 inches, one person per tube. The second thing is the toboggan chute, a handmade wooden trough flooded with ice that runs out onto Hosmer Pond: $10 per person per hour, toboggans provided for up to four riders, 12 toboggans per slot, riders must be at least 5 and anyone under 12 rides with an adult. The chute needs 8 inches of ice on both the trough and the pond, and the Snow Bowl's page says it closed for the 2025-26 season because of ice levels on the pond and in the chute, so a warm winter can erase it. One navigation note: the "Tube & Toboggan" link in the site's own menu returned a page-not-found on September 13; the details live on the toboggan chute page, which is where we read them.
How to actually pick
For a family with a kid under 40 inches, the answer is Cranmore or King Pine, because Seacoast will not let that child on the hill and Camden's floor is higher still at 42 inches. Cranmore takes 3 year olds in a double tube. King Pine has no minimum but the child must ride alone, which is a different question for a four year old than for a seven year old.
For anyone who wants tubing on a weeknight after work, Seacoast's Friday night sessions and Thursday student nights are the only in-state options, and King Pine's Tuesday evening is the only other one within reach.
For price per hour, King Pine at $24 for one hour, Camden at $15 for one hour and Seacoast at $35 for two hours are closer than they look. Cranmore's $49 for two hours is the most expensive and is also the only one with a lift-served park that has already committed to prices for the coming winter.
For a Portland resident with no interest in a two hour drive, it is Seacoast, and the work is in the buying: watch for the weekend's tickets to post midweek, pick a session, and sign the waiver before you leave the house. If the weather turns the plan indoors, our rainy day guide is the fallback, and if it turns the roads white, read the studded tire and snow-on-car rules before heading for New Hampshire. The other cold-weather activity with a similar first-timer profile, and a similar posted-schedule problem, is covered in our guide to ice skating around Greater Portland.
FAQ
Where is the closest snow tubing to Portland, Maine?
Seacoast Adventure at 930 Roosevelt Trail in Windham, roughly 30 minutes from downtown Portland on Route 302. It is the only snow tubing park in Greater Portland. The nearest alternatives, Cranmore and King Pine in New Hampshire and the Camden Snow Bowl, are all about 90 minutes away.
How much does snow tubing cost at Seacoast Adventure in Windham?
The rate card posted as of September 13, 2026 is the 2025-26 one: $35 per person for a two hour session for anyone 48 inches or taller, $50 for a combo of one child 40 to 47 inches plus one adult, and $17.50 per student on select Thursday student nights. Two late-March weekends were $10 off. A 2026-27 card had not been posted yet.
Is there a minimum height for snow tubing near Portland?
Yes, and it varies. Seacoast Adventure in Windham requires 40 inches, with children 40 to 47 inches linked to an adult's tube. Camden Snow Bowl requires 42 inches. Cranmore in North Conway takes children from age 3 in a double tube with an adult. King Pine in New Hampshire has no height or age minimum but every rider must ride alone.
Does Pleasant Mountain or Sunday River have snow tubing?
Not that either mountain's website shows. Searches of pleasantmountain.com, sundayriver.com and sugarloaf.com for tubing returned nothing on September 13, 2026, and Pleasant Mountain's winter activities page lists none. Mt. Abram's FAQ states it discontinued tubing in 2014, and Titcomb states it does not offer tubing or sledding.
Does Lost Valley in Auburn have snow tubing?
Its website description says "snowtubing & Brewpub onsite," but on September 13, 2026 its tickets page sold no tubing ticket, its site search for tubing returned no page, and its sitemap contained no tubing page. Call 207-784-1561 before making the drive for tubing.
When does snow tubing season start near Portland, Maine?
Late December. Seacoast Adventure opened December 26 last winter and its FAQ says opening day is "scheduled for late December, hopefully December 26" again. Cranmore's night tubing runs late December through mid March. None of the parks in this article had announced a 2026-27 opening date as of September 13, 2026.
Can I bring my own sled or tube to a tubing park?
No. Seacoast Adventure does not allow personal sleds or tubes on its hill, and the tube is included in every ticket. Camden, Cranmore and King Pine likewise provide the tube or toboggan as part of the ticket.