Holiday Coaster Express

Today we surprised K with a little outing. I swear, almost everything we do with her is surprise...for 3 reasons - 1. if we tell her in advance, she'll ask every hour when we're going.  2. if we tell her in advance, and plans fall through (which they most definitely do at times), then we feel bad & she's devastated.  3. Who doesn't like to be surprised??? haha

So I had heard of this thing they do on the Coaster every holiday season called "Holiday Coaster Express" - which apparently sells out each year. It's only on one day, and only 2 different times. Luckily I had thought about it ahead of time, and took note when the website said tickets would go on sale. I put a calendar reminder for the day of, to remind me to buy the tickets...which are only $6 a person!

K picked out a new skirt I had bought her, and of course coordinated with a brightly colored necklace (that she'd got during our trip to AR), and her fav silver sparkly crown headband - that girl cannot go ANYwhere without a headband on these days....even better if it's a 'crown' headband!!

When we arrived at the station she was SO excited to be getting on a train again, her 2nd time ever. Then we finally told her what we were there for - to have a special visit from Santa & some of his buddies!! The total time we'd have on the train was about 90 minutes...so I figured Santa would be towards the end, and that they'd have a few different Christmas characters coming around as well. However the information originally provided on their site was a bit misleading - as only the Grinch made a quick appearance in the beginning - then NOTHING until the end when Santa, and later Mrs. Claus, made they're way in. I also read that there would be 'caroling' - but there was none, not even some faint Christmas music playing in the background, so that bummed me out.

In all, we had an okay time - but we were really surprised that this 'sells out' every year... for something that wasn't really well planned. I figured that with a ton of kids on each car of the train, you think they'd have a couple different characters coming by to entertain them - an hour & a half is a long time to have them just sitting there. Literally after we saw the Grinch, it was probably 45 minutes until Santa came. So the entire train ride, Kapri was so anxious, and kept anticipated the next one.... so that was a little disappointing (and the people of the NCTD definitely received a little email from me with my thoughts on the whole thing).

At least Santa was pretty legit...and Mrs. Claus was so adorable - so it ended on a good note: