Dartmoor Railway 'Entertainment trains'

The following from trip advisor typifies the ongoing unsatisfactoriness of the current USA Chicago based tenant of this Aggregate Industries owned line that has increasingly demoralised volunteers with no encouragement from the local DR Manager responsible.
Interestingly the UK Govt. has, following much local campaigning, tasked First Rail's GWR TOC to introduce a (much needed) regular passenger service between Exeter and Okehampton as soon as practicable etc. :-
Peppa Pig Easter Egg Trial
Review of Dartmoor Railway
Reviewed 3 days ago
What a disappointment today was, £71 for four adults and a 2 year old child, we were led to believe that Peppa Pig would be visiting the chidren on the train with a nice gift for them, in reality, the train was absolutely filthy, we had to clean the table ourselves as it was covered in crisps and drink, the train journey was 5 minutes in length. Peppa Pig told stories to the children (no gift), my neice kept asking where the present was, we were there for 30 minutes in total, 5 minute train journey back, the gift was a paper bag of sweets which I could have purchased for £1.00!
£71 for an hour on a hot and filthy train! Sweets were too old for my two year old neice (Peppa Pig egg for four years plus), when I mentioned this to the 'ticket master' he simply shrugged and said 'that is what there is' !

Date of experience: 22 April 2019

That sounds pretty bleak.

On the trip adviser site there are far more positive reviews than negative. Perhaps there are one or two individuals that need a bit more "customer service training"?

It's hard to be objective without being able to see the railway's sales spiel for the event. As it's now in the past, it's been taken off the web site.

However, the trouble with TripAdvisor is that it's a hotbed of overreaction. If people had a nice time, they go OTT on the superlatives ("had a fantastic time"), if they had a less than perfect time (in their opinion) they tend to be hyper-critical ("absolutely filthy"... "covered in crisps and drink").

Whenever I look at TripAdvisor, I tend to ignore the five and one star reviews and read closely between the lines of the rest.

HaggisBotherer said:

However, the trouble with TripAdvisor is that it's a hotbed of overreaction. If people had a nice time, they go OTT on the superlatives ("had a fantastic time"), if they had a less than perfect time (in their opinion) they tend to be hyper-critical ("absolutely filthy"... "covered in crisps and drink").

Whenever I look at TripAdvisor, I tend to ignore the five and one star reviews and read closely between the lines of the rest.

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I tend to agree which is why I became a TA reviewer myself in order to apply some balance and repay the good reviewers who have been helpful. Though of course moderate reviews could be regarded as middle of the road and boring instead.

Preserved railways have to do commercial stuff but need to get it right and not be seen to overexploit certain markets. Keeping volunteers happy is essential.