Our Trip to Santa’s Paradise Express

Welcome to Queen Mother Blog! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

First, I want to say congratulations to Sarah, the winner of my giveaway for a family four-pack of tickets to Santa’s Paradise Express!  I hope you and your family enjoy it as much as we did!

Me, Marc and Rayna headed up to Lancaster for a little getaway and our first stop was the Strasburg Rail Road.  I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised just how busy the area was for that Black Friday weekend, but I was!  The Rail Road was bustling with families waiting to ride the train with Santa.  It wasn’t too crowded though, once we actually got on the train there was a comfortable amount of people per car, and we had room to move over to the other side to catch a different view now and then.

The station was already festively decorated, and there were vendors set up outside that were offering fresh kettle corn, hot chocolate and coffee.  We picked up our tickets, bought some popcorn and hot chocolates and boarded the train.

Once we were on board we caught a glimpse of Santa right away and Rayna started to get a little nervous.  We had been preparing her for Santa for a while now, telling her that Santa is the one who will bring toys on Christmas, and she needs to speak up and tell Santa what she’d like for Christmas.  She seemed ok with this, and was happy to see Santa talking to the other children on the train (and passing out gifts, Santa gives the children on the train a little toy after he talks with them).  But when Santa started setting his sights on Rayna, she started to pull her hood over her eyes to hide!

Watching Santa head towards her

What I liked about this Santa was that he was not about to let a little shyness get in the way of what he was supposed to do.  He right away started tickling her (how did he know that she wouldn’t be able to resist a good tickle? I guess cause he’s Santa right?) and the ice was broken.  Santa asked what Rayna would like for Christmas, and she replied “toys!” and after a little more chatting and posing for some pictures (Strasburg RR has their own photographer take a pic, but they are happy to take a picture with your own camera as well) Santa gave Rayna a little gift:

Of course we had to buy the pro picture, as the one we took with our camera (this one) Marc isn't looking!

After Santa makes his stop with you (or I guess if you are further back on the train it would be “before”) there were some strolling entertainers to keep the festive mood going and provide a little diversion from the scenery.  There were some young carolers and then there was a couple of people playing Christmas songs on brass instruments, which was nice.  All and all it was a fun time and really got us in the mood for the Christmas season.

If you are interested in checking out Santa’s Paradise Express at Strasburg Rail Road, click here to visit their website.

Disclosure:  I hosted a giveaway for Santa’s Paradise Express and was provided with tickets for my family for review purposes.  I was not paid or obligated to write this post.  All opinions are mine.