Trains!

My parents also had several days off of work around Christmas and asked us if we wanted to go to Entertrainment Junction one day.  We'd all heard of it but none of us had ever been so we headed up there.

There were so many sights to see that Lucy couldn't be bothered to look at the camera for a photo:

We walked through a very neat train display...entire towns were set up and as we went through, the display showed the evolving times.  Lucy liked seeing the trains but also enjoyed her freedom when she was allowed to walk (run/be chased) on her own.


There was a Christmas town set up and we heard Mrs. Clause was in there (Santa was vacationing after his big night).  We weren't sure what the Lucygirl would think of Mrs. Clause but she did just fine - because Mrs. Clause gave her a yummy cookie!

She wasn't afraid of her at all, and even gave her a little wave as we left her kitchen.

Next we walked through more of the Christmas setup as Lucy munched on her cookie:

Hiding behind some candy canes

There was a little play area where Lucy had a lot of fun:

Climbing the ladder to go down the slide

Her daddy helped her slide a few times but they also had a big climbing area - connected, elevated tubes for the kids to climb up and slide down and peek out the windows at their families from up above - and Lucy wanted to go inside...Dave said, "That's mama's jurisdiction," so in we went...

They also have a fun house and we checked that out as well.
Here's the info on it from their website:

The five sideshow tents are Curtain Chaos, Clown College, Mirror Maze, Crazy Caper adn Outer Limits: Journey Through the Black Hole.

The first sideshow tent houses an all-new mammoth Mirror Maze, but not just any mirror maze - it is one of hte largest of its kind in North America.  Guests enter a disorienting land of illusion, a visual assualt on their sense as they attempt to navigate through an ever-deceiving labrynth of reflections, unable to determine where one mirror ends and the next begins.

All five of us went into the mirror maze (I held Lucy).  Dave got ahead of us and I was kind of freaked out!  All of the walls were mirrors, obviously, and at one point, we could see Dave's reflection and kept reaching out but were unable to make physical contact.  My dad started moving a little faster than us a couple of times and I freaked out and grabbed him - I would not let the "real" dad leave us!  Lucy was confused at first - but curious - and about halfway through, she was kind of done...she never cried or freaked out, though, and was fine once we were out.

A second tent is home to the crazy Clown College with rooms to confound and confuse.  The clowns abandoned the building but left behind a visual jumble of perception distortions, starting with a hallway with clown photos that react when a guest pushes a button to make a clown's bow tie spin or squirt water.  This just begins a bizarre journey of surprises where visitors seem to grow or shrink merely by walking across a room, challenge a tilted room, marvel at a gravity-defying ball that rolls uphill not downhill, and pose in classic  funhouse mirrors that oddly distort the viewer's reflection.

All I can say about this room is...I fell down...the tilted room conquered me and I was trying to grab an escaped Lucy and get the hell out of there...I felt like I was going to barf for some time afterward...

The next attraction is Curtain Chaos, a bewildering maze of twists, turns and dead-ends through hanging curtains that test a visitor's sanity and sense of direction.

This one was pretty neat...another maze, but instead of mirrors, all of the walls were curtains.  Behind most curtains was a wall (though behind one was a toilet-turned-flower pot!).  This one annoyed Lucy and she was "all done" from the moment we walked in.

A fourth attraction is the Outer Limits: Journey Through the Black Hole, which takes visitors on an outer space encounter.  Here, visitors are channeled through a wild, spinning vortex tunnel then launched into a black hole with a dizzying array of glowing stars and planets.  Visitors must escape by squeezing through a claustrophobia room.

I don't think we did this one...it didn't leave an impression if so...

Our fifth and newest attraction is Crazy Caper which features a quest to find the Ring Master's key hidden in his tent.  Booby traps, challenges and various alarms and obstacles throughout provide a laugh inducing challenge to outwit the main man of the circus!

This little obstacle course was pretty fun - there was yarn stretched all around one room with a black light so the yarn was glowing and looked like lasers that you had to navigate without letting them touch you...Lucy sat this one out!