Hi - I own a mail order toy company and I'm also a Mum so I knew pretty much about the hype that this event caused... what was promised was NOT what this turned out to be!
It really really was disgraceful, disgusting and dispicable, as Gordon himself would say!!!!
The amazing amount of hype surrounding this event must?ve been dreamt up by the most amazing marketing wizz!
We bought our tickets in the first few days they were on sale on the TicketMaster website for about £23.00 (2 adults, 2 children (which had to under 8 years old - or you would need to purchase and ADULT ticket) - I should've taken that as a big red stop sign right there!
We've been to about 15 different Days Out with Thomas events around the country, and they've all been superb, had lots of different trains to see, and plenty of space and time to do everything you would want to do - we've been to Quainton (Bucks Railway Centre) as mentioned here about three times, and it's one of the nicest and best run of them all, I could go on to list the benefits of all of them, but in another message perhaps. Back to today's fiasco...
Everyone who walked past us said nothing good, every time you were in a queue, people would be seething - the stage show was particularly bad, and really wasn't going to be spectacular when we saw Edward, Percy and James come out as flat cardboard cutouts... that's when my son said : "Where's the real trains!"... not sure it would've made ANY difference if he'd never ever been to a proper Day Out with Thomas!! That was the "highlight" of the day, along with the 3 hour journey that should've taken just over an hour (we queued with a three year old in the back) for nearly two hours from the A1M to the car park. (This was about a three mile distance). Oh yes, and over an hour in a queue to get out of the .. er... place... just to get from our parking space to the exit! No traffic management whatsoever, and those bewildered staff that couldn't manage to fake a major illness to get out of it, just wanted to crawl up in a ball (we felt very sorry for all of them - the "management" were to blame not the poor people thrown into the lions den!)
As for the catering, I'm so pleased that, for once, we took a picnic - normally we wouldn't, but we could see what it was like going past the... er.... "arena" - basically a field with a temporary fence around it, and we took the pushchair, as we kind of hoped Tyler might fall asleep and miss it all! Hoping he wouldn't realise quite how bad it was! We tried to make the best of a bad day, and we tried to get Tyler to realise that queuing for nearly an hour for a Helter Skelter ride was no problem, I queued whilst Daddy took him off for a tombola prize game (rubbish) - and then we had to draw the line at standing in a line that was going to be well over an hour and a half for the Big Wheel (Ferris wheel that looked like it was built for rather less people than it was going to have to deal with today!) All afternoon Tyler was upset because he couldn?t go on the Big Wheel.
If Hit Entertainment want to be taken at all seriously in future by the most ardent fans of Thomas the Tank Engine, then they will need to redeem themselves to every single one of those ticketholders.
We sold our first lot of tickets on eBay because we were originally going to have to be somewhere else today, shame that event was called off, because I?m pretty sure that we would have had a better time ANYWHERE else! We then bought some new ones on eBay from another family who must?ve had a lucky escape, and resold the spare ones we bought which thankfully covered the cost of our own tickets we needed to get in!
The most ironic part of the whole day was that by the time we eventually got to the gate to get in, nobody wanted to check or take our tickets, so, in reality, probably anybody could have breezed in without any tickets at all! I can only feel extremely embarrassed and sorry for the family that bought our original tickets on eBay for nearly £300! I?m glad I sent them a whole load of extra freebies when I sent their tickets!
The queue for the ?Thomas Shop? (marquee) was well over an hour long, and I rushed up to a pregnant lady who was just coming out of there with a small bag and asked her what kind of things were in there - anything exclusive or special for the event, or anything at all worth queuing that long for - and she told me that you could buy anything at all to do with Thomas in there, but nothing you couldn?t get anywhere else all for the same price, and certainly not worth waiting in a long line in a muddy field in the rain for! She said she wouldn?t have bothered if she hadn?t got to the front of the queue because she was over 8 months pregnant! Much as I could do with losing a few pounds, I didn?t think I would try that one on!
The ?VIP tent? had everyone fuming, because there was nothing clear as to what the qualification was to get in to it, and it SEEMED to be something to do with competition winnners, but most parents who were really starting to lose it wanted to find someone senior to have a shouting match with (no surprise!)
The ONLY thing at this event that was NOT the organisers? fault was the torrential downpours!
Sorry I?ve gone on a bit, but this was a nightmare! Everyone who attended this event should write to the organisers - I?ll get you all some addresses and will post it here.
Thankfully we salvaged the fact that it was Thomas? birthday with my son by telling him we?d make a cake tomorrow and eat it for him because Thomas can?t eat cake as it would clog up his funnel! The brightest of children would need a great deal of imagination to believe that Thomas enjoyed HIS own Birthday Party!