Thomas Land

A while ago, we received our usual clubcard vouchers courtesy of Tesco and instead of just getting discount on our shopping we decided to exchange them for vouchers for Drayton Manor, the home of Thomas Land.  Matthew has been asking to go to Thomas Land for a while, and we told him that he could go after he turned three.  As I had the day off, and Drayton Manor are running a "Magical Christmas" event at the moment, we decided to go yesterday.

We kept it a surprise, and didn't mention anything to Matthew (just in case we had to cancel) .  Fortunately everything went to plan, and we even managed to have fine weather, so we told Matthew we were going on a trip but didn't say where.  When we arrived, Matthew saw the sign outside with Thomas and started to get excited so we told him where we were.

During the day we went on trains behind both Percy and Thomas, saw the original model railway set from the Thomas TV show, and I took Matthew on a lot of rides including Sodor's Classic Cars, Diesel's Locomotion Mayhem, Rockin' Bulstrode (quite wild - Matthew enjoyed this), Jeremy's Flying Academy, Blue Mountain Engines, and Lady's Carousel (very tame compared to the other rides, but Matthew still enjoyed).  He also had a go at Terrence's Driving School, which featured model tractors with a foot accelerator pedal and a real steering wheel.  He was the youngest on these and we weren't sure if he would get the hang of it, but he did remarkably well and after several crashes was able to steer reasonably well by the time he finished.  He wasn't the only little boy crashing!

We couldn't avoid the "biggest Thomas shop in the World" and came away with a toy D199 diesel which Matthew chose, a Mega Blocks James, an apron for painting, and a door hanger for Matthew's room.

Matthew was very good throughout the day - the only incident came when we had to leave Emily's Adventure Play area, and threw a tantrum because he didn't want to leave; this was understandable under the circumstances as we were only allowed 15 minutes of play and Matthew is used to an hour or more when he goes to Funtazia.

There were a few rides which we thought would be too scary for Matthew, such as the Troublesome Trucks Rollercoaster and Cranky's Drop Tower, and surprisingly Matthew also declined the opportunity to go on Harold's Heli-Tours and Crazy Bertie Bus, and didn't want to go in th 4D Cinema.  We didn't push him to go in the cinema when we discovered they weren't showing a Thomas film, as we were running out of time by that point.  After Thomas Land, we took Matthew in to Santa's Magical Workshop where elves blew bubbles on him, and he saw a snowman and some (model) reindeer. He had a chance to sit with Santa but declined this as he's still a bit frightened of him, so Santa just called his name and waved to him.  He then took away a free gift of a Thomas activity book.

Before going home, we had a delicious meal at the attached Grill restaurant, where I had one of the best steak, chips and beer-battered onion rings I have ever tasted!