North Pole Express — Attraction in Grapevine

• UPDATE** Wanted to provide an update! The North Pole Express called all customers in our train car apologizing for the mix-up and refunded everyone's money as well as gave us the opportunity to purchase tickets early this year. We are taking this as a one-time, unfortunate fluke and look forward to visiting again this year! Customer service goes a looong way and they did the right thing in our family's eye. They stepped up to the plate and made a very generous effort to make it right. Thank you!

Original Post - We have attended this event for 5 out of the last 6 years and it used to be a magical experience with shows, real reindeer and Mrs Claus delivering cookies to the kids and leading everyone in Christmas carols! This year it was just a sad forced shell of what it used to be. No one seemed happy to be there. It all started with the dumpster fire that was purchasing tickets! We waited online for almost an hour for our turn to buy tickets and when we entered the platform we were given 10-15 minutes to pick a date and time from limited options and purchase our tickets. When we arrived the shuttle never came.to pick up visitors so we had to pay for parking, the carousel, which was the only thing to do, didn't seem to be open as the ticket booth was closed the entire afternoon. The only other thing on the midway to take advantage of was a corndog stand and a vendor that sells beardgrooming supplies and another that sells jewelry....very Christmasy (sarcastic) The train ride (which left abt 30 mi utes late) was a hokey interaction with a PA system that no one could hear and couldn't follow along with, no Christmas carols and the experience culminated with a skinny 23 year old "Santa"with a short brown beard and an obvious pillow stuffed in his jacket!!! WHAT THE HECK? Every adult on our train car just laughed in disappointment bc no one knew how to react Our kids actually asked us where Santa was bc that wasn't him. At $40 a ticket this wasn't worth it! We agreed that we definitely made "memories" from this. We didn't even bother getting pictures with Santa bc we couldn't deal with any more disappointment 😔 This is the last year we are going. Not...

Terrible ticketing process. First off, the link didn’t go live for me until 1005 when it said they would go on sale at 1000. I was on my phone and my laptop. Also, I wanted the stockyards tickets and didn’t realize there was a different link or area I had to go to to access this terrible ticketing software. When I finally got where I needed to be (one webpage on regular tickets and one on the stockyards), I had to wait online to get into a virtual line (WTF?). Once in line, had to wait another 15 mins. An annoying person was slowly walking across my screen as it got closer to my time. This guy might as well had laid down and taken a nap. FINALLY, got access, and then you had to hit “Get Tickets” and the screen refreshed. Then hit “seat selection” and then it refreshed. (Why is there this secondary page when you can go right to the seats from “Get Tickets”?). Once you click on tickets, it takes several seconds to “Refresh” and reserve the ticket for you. So you may only get to click on one bench before you can select another one, and they are being picked up by other people like freaking vultures at carcasses. I finally had my seats and went to checkout with about a minute left (because you only have 15 mins to attack the seats like your playing a game of Wack-a-mole). I had EVERYTHING filled out for payment except my email address and had to check two boxes and hit submit/confirm/process, and this VERY user friendly and adaptive software kicked me off! I lost my tickets I had been diligently working on getting. I tried to retrieve my tickets, and they were swallowed up like a fat kid eating cake by the time I got back to the seat selection page (remember the multi-page refresh problem… yeah). I have done this two years in a row, and this is by far the most horrible ticketing experience I have ever been through. I will not be trying again next year. I wasted over an hour of my time I could had been playing with my son. Thank you Polar Express Grapevine. Ruining lives one...

Overall poor experience for our family.

Let's start with the good... Cool train for a toddler to ride. Well decorated areas and things to do before getting in-line.

Negatives-the required/recommended time to arrive is way too early. We were told to arrive approximately 45 minutes before ticketed time. However, the actual wait was well over one and a half hours. The wait EXCEEDED the ticketed start time by over 25 minutes. Most of your time will be spent in a line that has nothing to provide a distraction for children... Boring tent with dingy green carpeting and never ending loop of infomercials to Gaylord Texan (Everything a toddler could ask for).

Now, let's move to the worst.. They seated us next to a Tash can that smelled of rancid milk and lost dreams. So of all the seats we were the only ones that couldn't adjust to see each other (the other seats reversed so you could change direction of view to inward). I guess not the trash isle.

Lastly, a bit concerning. Currently they are sharing this rail line with trainees for the new commuter rail going to DFW airport. This was announced during our ride as we had to stop to allow the other train to go past us. Maybe it's better not to have live trainings on the same tracks with a train full of families.

My recommendation is to pass this event at all costs. Just go to the Thomas the train event which is much better and run with more consideration...