VRE Train Talk eNews 11/13/17:
21st Anniversary Operation Lifesaver Santa Train Tickets Go On Sale Monday, November 20
Tickets for our 21st Anniversary Operation Lifesaver Santa Trains will go on-sale November 20, 2017 at 9:00am, online (for $6) at vrespecialevents.org and at various physical outlets (for $5).
Purchasing at a Physical Outlet
Only cash and checks will be accepted at the various outlets. No credit or debit transactions.
Burke Centre tickets will be physically sold only at Supervisor John Cook's Office - 9002 Burke Lake Road, Burke, VA 22015
Fredericksburg tickets will be physically sold only at Fredericksburg Visitor Center - 706 Caroline Street, Fredericksburg, VA 22401
Manassas tickets will be physically sold only at Historic Manassas Visitor's Center - 9431 West Street (Train Depot), Manassas, VA 20110
Spotsylvania tickets will be physically sold only at Spotsylvania Visitor Center - 4704 Southpoint Parkway, Fredericksburg, VA 22407
Woodbridge tickets will be physically sold only at Destination Station (Woodbridge VRE Station) - 1040 Express Way, Woodbridge, VA 22191
Purchasing Online
If you would like to purchase tickets on-line please use the this web address: http://vrespecialevents.org/ . At 9am on 11/20, tickets will be available for purchase.
Tips
- You can checkout with a credit card or a PayPal account. For those of you that have bought tickets online in the past, we are using a new online process. You may wish to setup an account on the site (not just a PayPal account) beforehand as tickets will sell out in under five minutes so every second counts!
- In the past, users have also experienced the page does not update when they hit refresh after 9am. To avoid this, you may want to disable your web browser from using cache memory (We know, we know, what is cache? In layman's terms, your browser will save pages you already visited in order to load them faster. Here is one article with a detailed explanation and how to disable.) VRE customer service staff are not IT professionals so we may not be able to help you very well in this regard and it might be to your benefit to enlist the help of those who are in the know.
6 Ticket Limit
Please keep in mind ticket sales are limited to 6 per person for the morning trains. Tickets for groups of more than 6 may be purchased only for designated trains. For online purchases, any person attempting to purchase more than 6 tickets for trains with designated limits will have their ENTIRE ORDER REFUNDED, thus not receiving any tickets. NO EXCEPTIONS.
Finally...
This is a very popular event combining two things children love: Trains and Santa! During the trip, while Santa and Mrs. Claus are making their way through the train to take pictures, we pass out Operation Lifesaver (railroad safety) goodies such as coloring books and engineer hats for the kids and even materials for the adults. Everyone gets candy canes! We do our best to have area high school choral groups come and sing carols on every train, although not guaranteed. We even have Marines on the platforms to collect for Toys for Tots. It's an all around festive time. Families have grown to love this event over the last twenty years so much that no promotion is needed on our part. (For example, we get phone calls starting every July about Santa Trains.) Please expect online tickets to go quick and lines to be long at the outlets. Hopefully you get to be one of the lucky ten thousand that get to participate!
Happy Holiday's From VRE!
