Polar Express

This is a lengthy post everyone, sorry! This past weekend after Thanksgiving, we took the kids, and Ryan's sister and her family came along, and made the very long 6 1/2 hour drive to Durango to ride the Polar Express. We got there Friday evening and stayed until Sunday morning. It was totally worth the time and the money to see the kids faces and eyes,especially when Elle turned around and said, "I can't believe we are really going to the North Pole!" They started us out by bringing everyone out of the train station to wait for the train to arrive. While we were waiting, they started playing the story over the loud speakers. Then when the Polar Express song started, the train comes rolling up just like on the movie.


This last one is a little hard to see, but they had the conductor come out and had a little boy act out the part where he doesn't want to get on the train and the conductor tells him to decide because he has a schedule to keep.


So then we all boarded and they gave us our golden tickets to have the conductor punch later. The seats could turn and face each other like they did on the movie and there was a tree and lights and ornaments decorating the train. The conductor came through after we left and punched the tickets and they passed out hot chocolate and cookies while the Hot Chocolate song was playing. Then they read the story and showed everyone the book while it was playing.








So after riding for about 30 minutes, it is short because it is a "magic train,"
we arrived at the North Pole and saw Santa's village all lit up and Santa and the reindeer and the elves were outside waving. The kids got to stick their heads outside the windows and wave. So then we stopped for a few minutes and backed up and stalled while Santa got on the train, then we began our return trip. As we were going back, Santa came through each car and handed out bells like he gave the boy in the movie and we sang Christmas carols. Before he came into our car the chefs had everyone start cheering "Santa, Santa, Santa!" We even stopped for a second to let "Billy" off (the shy little boy from the movie) and as we passed they had "him" standing outside the train with his striped red and white present jumping up and down next to a house. When we got back they passed out hot chocolate souvenir mugs and we unloaded the train to see the real reindeer and sit on Santa's lap inside the train station. It was seriously one of the vacations I will probably like best forever because it was so much like the movie and the kids were totally enthralled.