at 3:17PM February 16, 2010

My family and I loved this place. It was a fun place to visit and I would strongly recommend it to anyone. One really neat thing was we could bring our dog and we did. He went everywhere we went even on the train ride. The town is exactly what we had hoped a real old west town. When we walked into the town, it was such a beautiful view. One of my favorite actors, John Wayne, filmed movies here and I could just picture him riding down the street on his horse. It was kind of unreal. We had only planned to stay a couple of hours but we ended up staying the whole day. We saw the funny gun fights and a hanging, Awesome! The food was very good too, I was pleasantly surprised. I have never had a buffalo burger but it was really good. We saw both magic shows and went into the saloon for a drink and listened to the singer for a little while. She was good but the gun fights were our favorite.
We visited back in July and my son is still playing cowboy shooting his guns and playing out the gun fights.

The train ride was nice too. It was just about the right time to keep my younger child's attention which is hard to do. The view was totally awesome, really cool. What a neat ride and it was super cool that our dog got to go too.

If you visit this area, don't miss Buckskin Joe's it is well worth the time and money.

at 12:28PM September 3, 2008

Pros:
The train ride was fun and had a wonderful view, but very uncomfortable for adults.

Cons:
I’ve traveled all over the west and have visited lots of these western tourist towns. My wife and kids just love them, but this one is definitely in the rip-off category. The main attraction they advertise is the “gunfight”. Don’t be fooled by the advertising photo of grown adults in authentic looking western wear, because what you actually get is four high-school age kids that rummaged through their closets looking for vaguely western type attire. One of the participants actually had a short sleeve work shirt from Sears on (short sleeves did not exist in the west). Two of the four had modern running shoes on, and a third had hiking boots. All of them were wearing modern pants (blue jeans with belt loops). The staging, choreography, and writing of the event was of the junior-high level. Perhaps the miniature donkey that roams the streets they call the mayor is also the “gunfight skit” writer too. My seven-year-old (who was dressed more authentically western then the participants) was so bored watching the gunfight that he and his three-year-old-sister wondered off to pet the donkey again. The food is average tourist fare, but over priced. The magic show is almost as good as the ones I put on for my parents when I was twelve. The rest of the “attractions” are of lower quality than the ones listed above. Some movies were filmed there in the fifties. Since that time it does not appear anything has been done to the place. Save some money and time and don’t bother with this pour excuse for a western amusement town.