All Aboard!

Yesterday the train was in town. Well, the "Disney's A Christmas Carol" train was in Spokane. It is an interactive museum of sorts based on the new movie coming out in November. It's been traveling all over the country showing some behind the scenes stuff and promoting the movie. Since it was free, Kathy and I loaded up the kids and headed over. Silly me thought that there wouldn't be many people there. I was wrong. We waited in line for about an hour before boarding the train. It was very well organized though, and to beat the heat, they had fans blowing mist toward us and water stations along the line. The only thing missing was snacks. The kids had to survive on Julianna's whole grain cheese puffs and Kathy's breath mints. Luckily, they all made it without starving. The best way to share the experience, I think, is with pictures. So here's our train adventure.

Here are the kids waiting in line by the train tracks. It was right there at the train station since it is a real live train. Julianna was trying to get away, but Josh held on tight.

They also had short bursts of snow shooting out of the signs along the way to give the feeling of Christmas. It looked like snow in the air, but when it landed on us it looked more like spit. Oh well, it was cool anyways. It's not often you see snow in July. Even in North Idaho. Here's Adam after being spit, I mean snowed, on.

Julianna did pretty well waiting in line. She walked around some and got carried some. Here she is next to the fence between us and the train.

Carolers also visited up and down the line and posed for pictures. They were really nice to the kids and we felt a little sorry for them having to wear those outfits on such a hot day. Adam looks good in a top hat, doesn't he?
We couldn't use a flash inside the train, so this picture is a little blurry, but you can see kind of what it looked like. They had tvs all along the way showing artwork from the movie as well as showing interviews with the actors and director. Notice the blue sky on the top and the greenery along the shelves. Very A Christmas Carolish.

Here are some of the pictures on the tv slide shows. This one is of the graveyard scene.

This is London in the 1800's.

This is Scrooge in his house. Check out the shadow.

This is the school house. The teacher in me couldn't resist taking a picture of this.

Apparently Big Ben was being built when the story takes place. This is a 1/24 scale model of Big Ben during construction that they used to base their computer animation on.

Here are some other scale models used during production.

They had some interactive computer activities, too. Here Adam is exploring the setting of the story. Just beyond this, they had cameras set up so that each person could morph their faces into one of the characters. The boys had fun seeing themselves and Scrooge and Tiny Tim. They were freaked out about seeing themselves as Belle. (Adam actually made a pretty nice looking Belle. But don't tell him I said that.) And seeing their faces on Crachit was just creepy. The pictures will be sent to Walmart where we can pick them up when they're ready. And it was all free!!

At the end of the train, they had this yummy exhibit. It looks good enough to eat!

After we exited the train, they had a mini theater set up. They gave us 3D glasses and we saw a few scenes from the movie. It looks really good and the digital 3D is pretty amazing. All in all, it was really pretty fun. We only ended up with one black eye and one bruised rib. And that was just Kathy and I. Just kidding, it was fun and there were no major injuries.

If that wasn't enough, we then took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese's for lunch. It was a long day. But a good day.