A Day Out With Thomas

Raise your hand if you love all the stuff your kid is into. Anyone? Me either. But given some of the stuff that's out there...Thomas isn't so bad. I'd even go so far as to say I don't mind him anymore. Grant isn't as into Thomas as he used to be. Cars, Avengers, and other superheroes seem to be more his thing these days but when I saw that Thomas the Train was going to be at Tweetsie Railroad, I mentioned it to Husband. The mountains in summer with a super excited kid sounds fun, doesn't it? It does to me :)

I'd been counting down the days for Grant for about a week before the event. And the day of he woke me up with: "Mama! It's time to wake up! It's morning! IT'S ZERO DAY!!" 

I booked our tickets for a weekday (Thursday) which turned out to be a fantastic plan. It wasn't crowded at all. We got there shortly before our scheduled train ride and Thomas was right there when we walked in. Grant was so excited "It's THOMAS! Do you see him? He's RIGHT THERE!"

We had some time before our departure so we
just wandered and took pictures.

Grant couldn't wait to get on the train (a big difference from almost 2 years ago) and had already picked out which car he wanted to ride in.

Husband hates my family selfies everywhere we go.
(Also, I hate the word "selfie".)

I think the ride is about 20 minutes "around the mountain". Usually they do a western gun fight type thing but they didn't use the guns this time.

Over the bridge

Past the fake cemetery

Past the little village

To the fort to look for indians (a.k.a. a bunch of white guys
painted up to look like indians)

There they are.

They let us go. Clearly you can see from their body
language that we weren't worth it.

Headed back to the station.

We only got to ride the one time but Grant didn't seem to care. There was a lot of other stuff to do and I'd been promising the chair lift all morning. I wasn't sure how he'd feel about it but he acted excited.

One more picture before heading up the mountain. (I like that
it looks like Thomas was looking at me for the picture.)

Next we found their Thomas activity area:

Hahahaha!

Trains to play with...

Stuff to color...

And a tattoo booth. He picked Harold the helicopter
and for the rest of the day tried to only hold hands
with his right hand so as not to mess up Harold.

On our way to the chair lift we passed the candy store with
these adorable marshmallows in the window.

Not being a fan of anything suspended from cables, Husband took the shuttle to the top of the park. I figured Grant would see the chair lift and then we'd be on the shuttle too. But he loved it. "We're flying!" he told me and he took every opportunity to wave to people.

At the top was a ton more stuff to do. They have their petting zoo and some kiddie rides up there including a smaller train ride that Grant went batty over.

Panning for "gems" (rocks) with Daddy.

Showing off the souvenir badge we got him (I
couldn't resist - there is never anything with Gran on it!)

Riding the airplanes

 The petting zoo. If you know me, you know I'm not a fan. I'm not that mom that runs around with hand sanitizer like a crazy person but I don't think people get how sick you can get from petting zoos! Husband says my job has ruined me. Anyway...I really branched out this time and actually let Grant touch and feed the animals. And I watched him like a hawk! 

He was a big fan of the deer.

But the goats were definitely his favorite.

After the petting zoo, Grant asked to go on the Twister (I've always heard it called the scrambler). He called it the spinny thing. I tried explaining to him that it goes really fast and that if he gets scared they won't stop the ride. "I want to do it." So we did.

Can you see that face? He was cracking me up! Yelling "HAHAHAHA!
OH MY GOSH! THIS IS CRAZY!" Later we went on the tilt-o-whirl
and got the completely opposite reaction.

He did the boats too but after the Twister, the boats just
were...well, just boats.

We took the chair lift again back down to the other ride area. Grant was only too happy to ride that again (and I was excited that I have someone to ride the chair lift with!). Shortly thereafter I discovered that the tilt-o-whirl isn't fun anymore so I smoothed out that experience with the helicopters.

Which he, of course, loved.

We stopped at the candy shop on our way out for some edible souvenirs and headed back to the resort. We all had such a great time, I'm so glad we decided to go. Grant hugged us both at the car and told us "Thank you for coming to see Thomas". I love this kid!