Since there’s a Dinosaur Train touring exhibit, you can purchase tickets to the officially licensed Dinosaur Train. It’s $20 for adults, $10 for people ages 3 to 17 and kids 2 and under are free. The ticket includes all-day train and trolley rides so it’s not a bad price at all. 

But that doesn’t answer my question. 

How much are tickets on the Dinosaur Train in the hit television show Dinosaur Train?

For the unfamiliar, Dinosaur Train is a relatively popular children’s television show from The Jim Henson Company that airs on PBS. Original episodes were produced from 2009 to 2020. A full length film was released in 2021. It’s about a family of dinosaurs that ride a train between different eras of dinosaurs. It’s cute and educational and not very annoying. It’s great for kids that love dinosaurs or trains because once they’re hooked, they’ll love both dinosaurs and trains. And if your kid is anything like my kid, they will yell, “All aboard!”

The kid will continue to yell, “All aboard!” until they ask for tickets. 

The Dinosaur Train conductor, Mr. Conductor, asks for tickets. The dinosaurs always have tickets. How much do these tickets cost?

I acknowledge the conductor asking for tickets is a way for the story to move forward. The conductor typically explains the new type of dinosaur we’ll meet, but there’s another way to do this. Tickets in our reality, more often than not, are purchased with currency. Currency is never mentioned in this universe. How the dinosaurs obtain tickets is never acknowledged.

Once again, why do this? Maybe it’s because I grew up with city trains that took tokens and now plastic cards, that I didn’t really run into a real life conductor that punches tickets until much later in life. It’s difficult to have a childhood affinity for something you didn’t encounter until you were a teenager.

Maybe it’s because I’m not so much fascinated with why Mr. Conductor punches tickets, but how the mom in the series, Mrs. Pteranodon, knew how many tickets her family would need to ride the train. She knew how much children’s priced train tickets cost before her kids hatched. In the intro song, which features a few lines from Mrs. Pteranodon (a pteranodon), we see her four kids (three biological, one adopted) hatch and Mrs. Pteranodon’s first instinct is to get out of the house ASAP. The second thing she says to Buddy, her new Tyrannosaurus son, is, “Come on Buddy, we’ll take a vacation/I’ll get us a ticket at Pteranadon station.” After explaining family is what you make it, she literally wants to flee. So they do. 

Is Mrs. Pteranodon in a bad marriage? Did Mrs. Pteranodon want kids? Is Mrs. Pteranodon attempting to live on the road because home life is unbearable? Is Mrs. Pteranodon hoping her children find a better home somewhere else? 

How much are tickets on the Dinosaur Train? What’s the true cost of fleeing? 

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