A Day Out With Thomas

Quite a while back, the "A Day Out With Thomas" tour (or whatever you call it) came to Nashville. The weather was kind of lousy, and the place was a madhouse, but Ayden and I braved the rain and the crowd.

The thing is basically a mecca for all things Thomas. There's the opportunity to take a picture with Sir Topham Hatt. There's lots of tables of train sets to play with. Bounce houses. Slides. A store that has every single piece of Thomas-licensed product ever made. (I let Ayden pick out one thing. He chose a lantern. I have no idea why.)

And, of course, the cherry on top of all of that is the chance to ride on a full sized Thomas replica. And by "ride on a full sized Thomas replica," I mean to ride in a retired dining car that, along with a dozen other retired train cars, is being pulled by a full sized, replica Thomas engine past a series of abandoned train cars and homeless encampments. It was not the most scenic of trips.

This little Thomas book (free with the price of admission) he's looking at may actually be his favorite thing from the whole experience. Two months later and he's still playing with it.

I don't think the ride with Thomas did that much for Ayden. He much more enjoyed riding on the little train being pulled by a lawnmower affixed with a train engine covering. We rode it multiple times.

At the end of the day, I don't think this is something we would do again. Too many people. Lousy surroundings. As you can see from the pictures, Ayden was kind of indifferent about the whole thing. I heard someone mention the Chattanooga version is much better. Maybe we'll take a trip to that one in the future, if Brogan ends up enamored with trains, too.