Polar Express reservations to begin in January

A holiday staple for 12 years, the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council’s Polar Express train trip has expanded, including adding a half-dozen new trips this year.
This year the departure site for the sold-out trip has been relocated from the railroad tracks near the former Ann & Hope store in Cumberland to an actual train depot on Main Street in Woonsocket. Evening departures were added for the first time. Professional actors auditioned for roles as story presenters on the train ride. A decorator was retained to make sure the red and green garlands, swags and bows were in just the right places at the depot and on the train.
Even the cookies were upgraded, for the first time baked by students under the supervision of chef professors at Johnson & Wales University in Providence.
The Polar Express in the Blackstone Valley costs more than $200,000 to produce, according to information provided by BVTC, and brings in only about $10,000 in net revenue for the tourism agency.”
“A lot of money goes out to make it happen, but we are really in tune to make it the best Polar Express in New England and probably the United States,” said Natalie Carter, BVTC director of operations and business manager.
She cited such individual costs as more than $10,000 a day to rent the train from Providence & Worcester Railroad, $10,000 for cups to hold hot chocolate and another $1.80 per cup for cocoa. “Everybody gets a [complimentary] cup of cocoa and a cookie,” said Carter, who couldn’t say how much revenue this year’s added trips, bringing the total to 22, will generate.
Bob Billington, president and executive director of BVTC, said the beauty of the story makes the effort worthwhile. “I think the story about believing in Christmas is something that rings true to most people around the world,” he said.
The BVTC Polar Express this year – sold out as of late November – runs for 11 days until Dec. 18, with two departures a day and 380 attendees per trip for a projected total of 8,360 people who will be entertained by the holiday favorite in 2011. Many of those are young children, with 4- to 6-years-old the age of most kids on the Express.
Donna Houle, project manager at BVTC, remembers when the event began 12 years ago and was held just one or two days at Christmastime. Over the years, largely through word of mouth, popularity of the Polar Express has grown so now BVTC will start taking reservations for next year’s event in January and expects to book a large share of the seats by the end of March, Houle said. As the event grows, so do BVTC’s efforts to improve it. Carter said the staff and volunteers get together to review specifics of the Polar Express and see how it could be made better. The cookies are a case in point. Carter said the former cookies crumbled too much, creating a mess to clean up, so she approached Johnson & Wales for new cookies she said are tasty and “extremely attractive.”
Approximately 60 tourism-council staff members and volunteers work on the Polar Express. In the past, volunteers were used to present the Polar Express story in each of six different cars that make up the train ride to the North Pole (actually, Worcester, Mass.). This year for the first time 75 people, including professional actors – some coming in from Manhattan, Houle said – auditioned for 12 roles of story presenters and singers. The express comprises six separate train cars, with six separate-but-similar simultaneous shows and six sets of entertainers. A train ride lasts 90 minutes.
The move to an actual depot enhances the experience. “Now, the visual experience starts the minute you arrive,” Carter said. “The depot adds a wonderful dimension.” Ann Jalette, a crafts expert from True Value Hardware in Woonsocket, was retained to decorate the train and depot, which BVTC used to do itself, according to Carter.
The Polar Express is not subject to the 7 percent state sales tax applied to sightseeing tours in Rhode Island for the first time this year. This is because the Polar Express is not a sightseeing tour, since train windows are blocked, but a form of entertainment on wheels, a point Billington repeatedly made when the new tax was under discussion several months ago. Billington insisted that when Polar Express attendees ask him where they’re going, he always answers, convincingly as he can: “The North Pole.”
The Blackstone Valley Polar Express is licensed by Warner Brothers Inc. and Rail Events Inc., which stages Polar Express events all over the country. Author Chris Van Allsburg and his publisher, Houghton Mifflin Inc., have given BVTC formal permission to stage the event. Allsburg “has always maintained a connection to our Polar Express. For this, we are grateful,” Billington said. Navigant Credit Union is a leading sponsor. &#8226

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