Today we took the boys to see Thomas. For those of you without preschool aged children, Thomas, as we know him today, is the creation of some marketing genius-turned-millionaire. It's incredible how much Thomas merchandise there is out there - It far surpasses SpongeBob or Dora! You can't simply get a Thomas train and expect it will be the right one. There are at least 5 different Thomas train systems and none of them are compatible with the other systems. And it doesn't stop at train toys. Today I saw hats, lunchboxes, silverware, bed sheets, pillows, games, cups, plates, clothes, etc. And Day Out with Thomas is another scheme they have devised to separate loving families from their hard-earned cash. (Well, this is how I felt when I bought the tickets, but now we are planning a trip to Disney World in a couple weeks and Disney's plan to suck all the money from our wallets is much more devious and greedy, so now Thomas seems almost well priced.) Basically, there is a real train designed as Thomas and it goes around the country (both here in the U.S. and in England) to various railroads and you can buy tickets to ride in one of Thomas' passenger cars. They make it a big thing with other activities to do, complete with a super large gift shop full of Thomas merchandise. This particular Day Out was held at the NC Transportation museum and the Thomas event probably brings in 50 times their usual annual attendance. We've been a couple times before and it's a very interesting museum, not specifically geared towards young children, but interesting enough to hold Coulson's attention if you don't linger too long.
So yes, we forked over the money and we had a great time! Coulson is a mild fan of Thomas - he likes watching the show on rare occasions (it's only on once a week and at 8am, so we're not usually watching TV then) and he can identify Thomas as "the blue one", but we're not really sure about all those other characters. But he enjoys trains in general and has a few Thomas trains for his train table, which we mix and match with trains and tracks from other generic sets. We have a couple Thomas books that he really likes too. And since anything that's on TV is amazingly cool, I knew that Coulson would really dig a Thomas train ride. When I told him this morning what we were doing, he ran around the room jumping up and down, which is really why parents do this stuff, right?
Even Charlie got really into it, which I didn't expect. I told him that we were going to ride on Thomas the train and he responded in his simple "oh" and I assumed he didn't get it. But when we stopped the car to briefly check out a local church's craft bazaar and yard sale, he asked, "I ride with Thomas now?" and then when we got to the parking lot at the railroad an hour later, he asked again. It's funny because he asks these questions with no emotion and always responds to whatever answer I give with his simple "oh." But just the fact that he's asking shows that he has been thinking about it and must be interested. And he's mentioned it a lot since then with cute phrases like, "I ride Domas da tain" and "Domas da tain go dugga dugga too too" (translation: Thomas the train goes chugga chugga choo choo). They also had a 15 minute show with Bob the Builder and Charlie told me "I dance wit Bob da Bidder like dis" and then kicks his feet back and forth (he was sitting in his car seat at the time.) So he had a great time as well.
We also met up our friends from Charlotte since the transportation museum is located half way between Winston and Charlotte (yes, it's near the park where we went camping!) So Coulson and Charlie got to play with their friends. Note the strange anomaly in the picture of all four kids in front of Thomas. For anyone who has every tried to take a picture of more than one child at a time, it won't take you long to marvel at the fact that all four kids are not only looking in the same direction, but also smiling. And we only took 2 shots! For comparison, when I tried to get pictures of the cousins, I took over 30 shots and never got one good shot.
We rode the train and had a nice picnic on the grass under the tree. All the kids got to squish some pennies (a great souvenir for only $0.51, we look for penny squishers anywhere we do something special!) In all, it was a great day. Coulson has already asked to do it again.
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