The Great Train Days 2023
at the Children's Museum of Sonoma County
We expected a hot and crowded day at the Children’s Museum for The Great Train Days 2023, but it wasn’t as hot or crowded as we expected. Maybe we learned our lesson from the Chinese New Year event experience, so we arrived a few minutes before 9am to secure a great parking spot in the shade a short walk from the entrance. The museum opened at 9 and, while the website stated the train exhibits wouldn’t start until 10, we found some already operational.
It’s worth noting this is a paid fundraising event. We are museum members and so normally just going to the museum does not require additional payment. In this case, it was $12 for each of us to attend. This included two tickets each to ride the train.
In the tricycle area outside the art room, there were a number of trains and tracks to build, as well as some cardboard to cut to make more interesting scenes. There was at least one other hands-on train building area outside. There were also several train exhibits just for looking at trains but not touching. The most interesting was one where kids could turn a dial to control the speed of two trains - one on the inner tracks, one on the outer tracks. Within 15 minutes in the area, we saw the trains derailed at least twice due to some younger kiddos finding it too hard to keep their hands off the moving vehicles :)
The far end of the parking lot is where the main event was: the train ride! We enjoyed a nice mist under the shade of trees in line. Upon boarding the train, we enjoyed a bit of info about the folks there operating the vehicle. Then with a “1, 2, 3, ALL ABOARD!” we were off.
The kids loved the two tunnels along the short course, and each ride had two laps. The highlight was definitely in the second tunnel which featured some fog as well as a quick mist burst partway through! One of the train volunteers told me that last year, the Children’s Museum had a jungle theme in the tunnel which was mostly great but some kids got scared of the toy crocodiles on the ground :)
After the ride, we took a break to enjoy some treats from Oskey’s Ice Cream truck.
There was a great selection here, with some real classics. We saw a number of happy kids with popsicles and It’s-It ($4) and other fun treats. I’m not sure why, but all our kids picked the same thing: the sno-cone ($3). I’m a big fan of sno-cones in general but in this case, I’d recommend against it as it was very hard and not as good as the other options. The Snickers Ice Cream bar ($5) was delicious and gone quickly.
We were the lucky recipients of an extra train ride thanks to a generous family next to us, and we saw another family receive three extra sets of tickets on our way out. Even though as one parent put it, “you see the full range of emotions at Train Day”, there were mostly great vibes in a beautiful summer day at the Children’s Museum.
We’ll be back next year!