Day Out With Thomas at Conway Scenic Railroad (video)
Here is the photo gallery of our trip to Day Out With Thomas at Conway Scenic Railroad!
Last weekend our family spent the morning at the Conway Scenic Railroad in North Conway, NH for “A Day Out with Thomas!” Though my son is not a fan of the Thomas the Train television show (yet), we live on the commuter rail line in our city and he is obsessed with watching the train roll by tooting the horn, a gazillion times a day, each and every time like he’s NEVER seen it before. That being said, we were really excited to take him for his first real, train ride.
North Conway is a very popular vacation destination in the White Mountains of NH. There are many activities to do that include shopping outlets, Storyland, Santa’s Village, Whale’s Tail Water Park, Attitash, and Mt. Washington. This area is a fun, beautiful family destination, any season of the year, which totally set the scene for this event. The parking is free, but it is situated amongst several retail stores, so though we ended up with “rockstar” parking, it took us a good 30 minutes in traffic to get the spot. In our driving around the area multiple times, I saw a playground a short walk away from the station, with a lot of green space in front of the station, great for a picnic.
Upon entering the “boarding area” Thomas was not in the station, so we wandered about. In the main area there were concession stands, and a tent with tables for eating with live musical entertainment. Though we didn’t visit this area, I saw signs for storytelling and movie viewing. We entered a very large tent with merchandise to buy featured event t-shirts and hats, as well as pretty much any Thomas the Train item you could think of. On site, the Conway Scenic Railroad had a locomotive that could be toured. Our tickets also included access to a free jumpy house, misting tent, hay bail maze, and another tent, aka “Imagination Station,” that had several, free, arts & crafts activities, and wooden train tables set up. Once a child visited each activity in the station, they received a stamp, and when the card was full they could redeem it for a special prize.
We had tickets to ride the train at a specified time, and we waited in a brief, quickly moving line to board. We walked through three trains until we found an open space to accommodate our family on a bench seat, with large open windows. The day was beautiful, and though I wish we sat on the opposite side of the train that had more of the scenic mountain view, it was a real fun 25 minute train ride, perfect for our toddler. Gavin gave the tickets to the conductor who punched them, received his Jr. Engineer Certificate and spent most of the ride being coaxed by us to pose in pictures.
Thomas the Train makes his way to 45 different cities all over the United States and Canada each summer. In my opinion, the destination of the Conway Scenic Railroad, really sealed the deal for this event making this a very memorable experience for our family.
Photo credits to Derek Wilmot Photography and a few nice strangers along the way!
My family was provided with free tickets to A Day Out With Thomas to facilitate this review. The opinions are my own.