Rant- Santa Train VRE Tickets
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Anonymous
| Literally sold out in less than a minute. I had my browser open and signed in, clicked to buy 4 tickets right at 9, and they sold out before I could do complete the stupid payment. So obnoxious. |
Anonymous
| Same here!! I had 3 browser windows open with the 3 different routes we could have done, hit refresh repeatedly from 8:59-9:00, and got held up in the checkout process. Literally by 9:01 they were sold out. I don't understand who gets tickets to this thing?! I guess you just have to go in person to the vendor sites but I don't have time for that on a Monday morning, and who knows how long the lines are. I went through this last year and thought I had a better system in place this year. I truly don't understand how anyone gets tickets online. It must be pure luck. |
Anonymous
I emailed the VRE office even, and they said there are 500 tickets available per train, and that all tickets for all trains sold out within 4 minutes. Not sure how that happened, because it seems like they were gone within one minute. Ugh. |
Anonymous
| Are these being bought and resold by computer programs that buy them instantly? |
Anonymous
| You can go in person and try to buy them. |
Anonymous
OP here, my husband speculated that might be the case as well. I raised it in my email to VRE, but, their response did not address it and only shared the time in which all tickets sold out. Maybe others can email the VRE office as well, and force them to stir up some consideration for how insane this is and alternatives that should be considered. |
Anonymous
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The one year we went - we waited in line in person.
After doing it once, I don’t need the drama of trying to buy tickets for it again 
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Anonymous
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It’s really not nearly as fun as it sounds.
For all the tix to sell out that fast, they are being bought y resellers. |
Anonymous
| Be glad you didn’t get tickets. We did it one year, and it was awful. You’re basically riding a commuter train w/ commuters. Santa walks through for a minute, you stop and get cold got chocolate in Manassas & wait in the cold for a train to return. I don’t know who hated it more - my 3 kids or me!!! |
Anonymous
| Ok, it’s not the “Santa Train” but if you attend the Manassas railway festival at the beginning of the summer (I think it’s usually 1 or 2 weekends after Memorial Day), you can easily buy VRE tickets and take a special train ride from Manassas to Clifton and back, and there are characters on the train - I remember stormtroopers and Darth Vader one year and Paw Patrol characters another year. It’s not Santa, but it’s a lot more low-key (well as low-key as anything can be around here) and the festival is also pretty fun. |
Anonymous
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I’ll never bother with this. It seems incredibly lame- see some anecdotes below. Don’t worry about it OP- sounds like you are not missing much.
https://forums.thebump.com/discussion/7703188/vre-santa-train-review |
Anonymous
Not sure when you did it, but that's not how it goes. You get on and off at the same stop. You do not get off to change trains or wait for a return train. There is no hot chocolate. It's still pretty lame but what you've described isn't accurate. |
Anonymous
I'm pretty sure this is how they used to do this--someone I work with was telling me about doing this a couple of years ago and mentioned the cold hot chocolate. There is an easy solution to this though...just charge more than $5 a ticket. |
Anonymous
| The Baltimore train museum has a Santa train just like this on the first stretch of commercial train track in the US. The museum has other fun stuff for train buff kids and usually has other holiday activities at times when the Santa train is on. |
Anonymous
+1 My first thought too. You'd think they would have their act together by now given this happens every year. They seriously cant upgrade their software against robots/outside computer programs that buy up all the tickets...like limit 5 tix per transaction? |