Mister & Miss Guided: Polar Express

My brother Jared happened to hear about/find out about a Polar Expess Train trip out of Utica. It's a 2 hour trip and on the first hour you are heading out towards the "North Pole" to see Santa and all his workers. Who knew the North Pole was only an hour away from Utica?! This was a bit of a let-down though. I'm not sure now what I was expecting, but we just got to view Santa and his North Pole from the window of the train.

The other downside of this was that it seemed as though their normal P.A. system was down or that something was malfunctioning. The elves kept coming through with a handheld speaker system that was scratchy and hard to hear. I did hear one worker mention something about "something not working" - and that's probably why we heard the Polar Express Story near the end of the story instead of from the beginning. The elves did their best in trying to keep us entertained by having games and dances in the aisles.

It was nice to look at the Christmas lights along the route glowing on the white snow. Plus to see the anticipation of the kids when they heard Santa was coming on the train after our stop at the North Pole.

We had an elf come through and start asking the kids what they wanted for Christmas. Makenna started talking about Barbies and cars - which was news to me - but then the elf said, "Oh, you mean like a Barbie car you ride in?" She then went on to explain how you could get a car big enough to fit a person in and how Makenna could drive it. I, being across the aisle and hearing this conversation, yelled, "Yo Elf! - are you paying for that?!" Nothing like a helpful teenager to plant the idea in her head of some expensive toy and then walk away!

We did get to see Santa though and he gave each kid a bell and we got our golden ticket punched and made it back to the station. That's where we were told we'd have hot chocolate and cookies. Again, me in my disappointment thinking we'd have these gourmet hot chocolates and a buffet of cookies to choose from. Santa must be in a fiscal cliff crunch as we got a little baggie of about 4 cookies (small archway chocolate chip ones - hard at that,) and instant hot cocoa - Swiss Miss(?) - about 3 /4 full and not too warm.

Being that it was well past Makenna's bedtime - she had a bit of a breakdown on the way home about Santa and what not. But luckily the trip is taken in their pajama's and all we had to do was brush her teeth before we left the train station so that she could just fall asleep on the way home and we could just put her into bed.

Not sure if I'd do the trip again or not....but it was worth the trip to do it once.

We started the day out by having Eli, Abbie, and Makenna (along with the adults) watch the Polar Express at our house in 3-D.