I'm not sure how much this tradition exists outside the U.S. but for most of the last century or so it is a pretty common occurrence here for parents to take their kids to see Santa Clause and to get a picture taken sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Most of the time this Santa is in a mall somewhere and you wait 5-20 minutes or so for your kids to get a chance to see Santa, tell him what they want for Christmas and to get a picture taken.
Things have changed a lot in the last 30 years or so. In retrospect, when I was a kid, "Santa" usually looked ridiculous with an obviously fake beard and a cheap looking costume. Today, it seems relatively rare that you see a fake bearded santa in this context and costuming has improved greatly. No doubt there is a great deal of variation depending on exactly where you go but overall Santas have become much more convincing.
We have been taking our kids to the Mall at Millenia in Orlando, Florida for a number of years now due in large part to how convincing the Santa is and how great the pictures are. Over the years the wait has grown considerably. 45 minutes the first year, more than an hour the following year, nearly two hours the year after that, etc. This mall is about an hours drive from where we live but we usually go there once this time of year to do some Christmas shopping and get the pictures taken. A couple of years ago I swore we would never go back as the wait exceeded 3 hours. But then the following year they started this ticketing system where you pick up a ticket, come back at the time on the ticket and then only have to wait 15 or 20 minutes. This isn't so bad because you can go do your shopping and come back.
But still... as the above image shows, wait time exceeded 9 hours at one point the day we were there. We got there early enough so that we really had just enough time to go to the stores we wanted to and come back. Some people clearly take their Santa Pics more seriously than I do because I wouldn't want to be in a mall for that long regardless of whether or not I had to stand in line (nor would I want to fight the ridiculous traffic to leave and come back).