Jeff couldn't believe it. He had convinced Mom and Dad to fly standby with him. Only something big could overcome their reluctance to try for a non-guaranteed flight, and this was big--literally. Some weird Canadian had built an enormous replica of the Ticket to Ride board in a park in Vancouver, the northwestern-most destination in the game.
The trio were mesmerized as they walked into the park. They saw round game pieces nearly as tall as themselves and twice as wide. Thin, plastic colored cards that must have been 25 feet high stood upright, wobbling in the breeze. There were markers for each destination, and on the ground, you could count off the steps and see that it was twice as far from Salt Lake City to Denver as it was from Denver to Santa Fe. All the employees were dressed like old-timey rail conductors. Dad and Jeff were impressed, but Mom was in heaven.
In painstaking detail, the artist had recreated the game exactly as Mom knew it--with one exception. In the middle of the park were several full-sized train cars linked together behind a locomotive. Since you can't see inside the trains in the game, the artist had to rely on his creativity in designing this part of the attraction.
As Jeff and his parents climbed aboard the second car of four, they were met with a dizzying array of cabinets, seats, buttons, levers, and more. While you couldn't say the train cars' interior decor was untrue to the game, it certainly didn't seem authentic to the time period Ticket to Ride is drawn from.
Mom was looking out one of the windows when she saw a sinister-looking man jump down from the locomotive and run away. Suddenly, the train began moving.
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