| rev:text
| - This review isn't going to give enough credit to how awesome and how much fun my family had. I'd give it a 6 if I could!
My family and I had NYE weekend plans for a cabin in Huntingdon, PA. My wife and I wished to extend the trip by a day, so we searched fun things to do in Pittsburgh for families. This popped up and as a bonus they had a rotating Daniel Tiger exhibit and we have HUGE Daniel Tiger fans in our house--they couldn't wait!
This museum is fun from the get-go with cool and interesting statues outside and presumably a garden/outdoor area (we visited in the winter.) Inside, colors and unique shapes greet visitors. After we bought our tickets (seemed fairly priced) we were encouraged to visit the art section first (it's also on the first level.) Our daughters got to cut shapes and help with a screen print, play with clay, and make paper cuffs. Nothing out-of-this-world for a museum, but it was just a start. I do have to say the staff made an impression on me immediately; the girl helping at the screen print section was especially gifted with working with children.
From there, we explored the rest of the first floor which included playing with magnets, how light travels, some odd-shaped blocks, a gravity-defying room, a video projection letter-catcher thing (you'd have to see it, but it's addictive) and a couple slides. (Our kids were 3 and 20 months, so some of the more advanced stuff was over their heads--still plenty to do though.) Finally, on the first floor was also the Daniel Tiger exhibit. It was a bit of a madhouse, and easily the busiest exhibit, but our daughters had a lot of fun. Just first floor with a considerable amount of time at the Daniel Tiger exhibit took nearly 2 hours.
We took a break for lunch and were already pushing up on nap times. The lunch was typical cafeteria food with the prices, once again, seeming fair. Adorning the walls were B&W pictures of Mr. Rogers which was neat.
The 2nd & 3rd floors are a lot smaller than the first floor. The 2nd floor had original puppets from Mr. Rogers displayed, a toy train set-up, and a sand display. Kind of a low point of the tour and we had two kids running on fumes.
We trekked on to the 3rd floor and promised a return to the Daniel Tiger Neighborhood at the end. The entire 3rd floor is a water floor. If I can give you any advice for attending this museum: bring swim trunks & suits for your kids. The 3rd floor is essentially a learning waterpark and there is water EVERYWHERE. Kids were having a blast, but we had to keep our kids kind of back so they didn't wind up soaked. There was a table to play with ice, a magnetized water wall, a water chalkboard, a bunch of fountains from the floor that you could change directions with pipes, and a long water table with tons of blocks to damn up, build it up higher, etc. We rushed them through this floor due to time and because we didn't want them to get soaked, but we easily could have spent more than an hour on that floor.
Went back to the Daniel Tiger Neighborhood and naps came calling, stopped in the gift shop (I'm a miser and couldn't believe the prices--very fairly priced), and headed for the parking lot.
I would recommend getting their early to take advantage of the parking lot across the street--no idea what you do when that fills up. I would pack a lunch (we were traveling so that was a little harder), and I'd bring swim suits & trunks for your kids. I might even recommend visiting that floor first so they have plenty of time to dry off.
Awesome, awesome, awesome children's museum. Well done Pittsburgh!
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)