We went to Kennywood yesterday to check out the new Thomas (the Train) Town expansion that they finally opened on Friday. We'll being taking the girls in a couple of weeks when the crowds die down. Heavy rains all year had delayed it's construction a bit. Kennywood paid $8.6 million for this and they sure got their money's worth. The area is absolutely beautiful, stunning, super colorful and perfect for families with young kids. And, short of the Kennywood RR, which they rethemed to Thomas with Thomas locomotives, music, themed station, and themed RR route, the area has a small footprint. Three Thomas themed flats accommodate children of all ages (under 36" has to have a parent ride with them). One themed mini drop tower has a 42" inch minimum. Adults can ride with their kids on all the rides. The flat the kids seemed to like the best was really cool, if you're a kid. They had firetrucks with vertical ladders. The ladders had a platform for the kids to stand on and spray water through hoses at a burning building that was in the middle of the ride. The ride went in a circle as the ladders moved up and down. That looked like a blast. They also had a train station show with four face animated full sized locomotives in front of a train barn, and two live actors. The kids went crazy with this show since they had them interacting in mass with many of the show scenes. They also had a really nice gift shop that reminded me of the Sponge Bob shop at USF. And housed adjacent to that, & air conditioned, was an indoor interactive playground with slide tubes, rope walks and all that kind of cool for the little ones stuff. The area and the entire park was packed with huge crowds. It felt like MK with all the zillion strollers around. My shins suffered though.....If they did something like this with TSL, and substituted these types of rides and interactive areas for Alien saucers, TSL could have been a better utilized area for young kids. And I bet Aliens alone cost Disney more than the $8.6 million this entire, really fantastic, IP kids land cost Kennywood....This is also the type of thing that Universal could set aside a couple of acres in KidZone with one of the IP's when they do the redo, whenever that happens.... Thomas Town was a really good use of space which is Disney like in it's presence. Color me greatly impressed how this turned out. Way above my expectations. And much better than the previous Sesame Street expansion at BGW.