Yesterday, we took the-toddler-gorilla and the-baby-gorilla on The Polar Express - A train journey to the North Pole to visit Santa and his Elves.
The Story
If you are unfamiliar with the story, it's now considered "A Christmas Classic" and was turned into an awful film in 2004. Wikipedia has a brief summary of the plot which I shall attempt to summarise further:
On Christmas Eve, a boy boards a train with a load of other kids in their pyjamas. They're on their way to meet Santa and one lucky child gets to choose the 1st present of Christmas before Santa gets off to his real job. The boy chooses one of the reindeer's bells as his present but the idiot forgets he's got a hole in his pocket and the bell falls out into Santa's sleigh 🙄 When he wakes up the next morning, Santa's wrapped the bell up and told him not to be so careless next time. The boy and his sister play with their bell, but the parents can't hear it because they don't believe in Santa. And to quote Wikipedia who quoted the end of the book:
At one time, most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I've grown old, the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe.
Our Day
After parking in some random field when they'd put boards over the stinking cow shit, we got on a bus (which the-toddler-gorilla found very exciting) to the train station where our experience would begin. We were a little early and upon entry, we went through a naughty / nice machine. I think the machine was broken as you can clearly see it go red as I went through, and then green when the-toddler-gorilla went through on his own.
Stupid machine. They should get that fixed.
After hanging around for a while and the-toddler-gorilla going on one of those car machine things that rocks around for 2 minutes, it was finally time to board The Polar Express.
On our journey, there was much merriment, a cup of hot chocolate and a tasty cookie to get us ready for bed. The staff on the train were jollily singing songs and acting out the story as the train chugged along - making it as interactive as possible for the children without any hint of it being obtrusive or too over the top.
We eventually arrived at the North Pole where Santa boarded the train. He took the time to visit every table and on it, every child and we were all given a Christmas Bell.
For us, that meant 4 bells - the-toddler-gorilla getting all of them and filling me with excitement about the drive home.
The day was a lot of fun, our children seemed to really enjoy themselves and if you get the opportunity to go on one, I'd recommend it. One family that we spoke to had driven 5 hours down from Liverpool and I'd question whether it's worth that much effort. But then I'm on the naughty list so what do I know?