Well the tragedy of Santaland’s last Christmas has been slightly buffered. It appears that next Christmas there will be Santaland after all! Sadly, there will no longer be monorail rides, but there will still be a monorail!

The children’s overhead monorail that has long been part of the Christmas celebration will also relocate to the lower level. Tikes will be able to sit in the train and pose for pictures, but it will not operate because management says the ceiling is too low.

So at least it will still be there. For those who rode it every year, or remember it fondly, it’s sad that they won’t still have it to actually ride, or take their kids on. Some, like our own dieselboi, don’t remember it at all so can’t really miss it. Some like me, don’t have any memories of it except going to see it last year and finding out it was the last year and feeling like I really missed out on something cool. (mostly because it’s so rare for me to to be too TALL for anything, and there I was, towering over the maximum height line.)

I’m glad to see that Federated Department Stores are going to preserve some of the “good bits” of the M&F downtown that we are partial to. It’s just good PR. Especially if, as Betsy pointed out, they ARE in fact going to keep the name (at least sort of).

NOTE: I shot video of the monorail last Christmas. Once verified by Google Video, I’ll post a link down here for y’all to reminisce over.