P . 14 | OCTOBER 2023 | THE HAMMONTONIAN
A HAMMONTON THING
All A-Boo DiDonato ’ s Trick-or-Treat Train by Kristin Guglietti
Located at 1151 S . White Horse Pike , the popular holiday train opened this season on Sept . 30 and will run until Oct . 29 .
Christina DiDonato Dillon , the vice president at Di- Donato Family Fun Center , said there is a train for three of the holidays , Halloween , Christmas and Easter .
The idea for the holiday train started in 2012 when Mayor Stephen DiDonato , the owner of DiDonato Family Fun Center and Dillon ’ s father , built one for the Kiwanis Halloween parade .
“ My dad , Steve , came up with the idea . He built the train originally for the Kiwanis Halloween parade and he drove it down Bellevue Avenue and kind of did it just for fun , and when he saw how everyone was so happy and the kids thought it was so cool , we added all this property next to the bowling center and we started going through the process of turning it into a holiday village out here . He designed the train on the back of a napkin , and it ’ s really his brainchild ,” Dillon said .
According to Stephen DiDonato , the original train was built around a John Deere tractor .
After he drove it around town , he thought it would be a great idea to use for birthday parties .
“ After that I said , ‘ Man , maybe we could use this for birthday parties .’ Give kids a train ride after they have their birthday party and then Chrissy got the idea of Christmas , and at the time there was a movie , Polar Express . I think Mickey Pullia at the time mentioned something to the fact where that would be neat to have it on Christmas and Chrissy ran with it and developed the holiday train ride that we have today ,” DiDonato said .
The DiDonato Family Fun Center has been doing the Christmas train since 2016 and the Halloween train started in 2017 , so this will be the sixth year for the Trick-or-Treat Train .
“ Every year it ’ s growing . Every year we add new
things , new ideas , new buildings ,” DiDonato said .
There are two trains , one is called The Spirit of Hammonton , which is the original train built for the Kiwanis Halloween parade , and the other is called The Phyllis Flyer , which is named after DiDonato ’ s mother and Dillon ’ s grandmother .
“ It ’ s named after my mom-mom , Steve ’ s mom , my grandma , and it ’ s pulling the Tip ’ s coal cart , which is my pop-pop who passed away this year ,” Dillon said .
All the train carts have numbers that are important to the DiDonato family .
“ Eighty-seven on the one cart is my parent ’ s wedding anniversary , which is cute . Fifty-two is an important number in our family because it ’ s the year the bowling center started in 1952 . And some are like my kids ’ birthdays like 18 is my son ’ s birthday . The number 58 is the year my grandparents got married ,” Dillon said .
Dillon said they are lucky to have an awesome staff .
See TRAIN , P . 15