Cold Child in the City

Chicago Children’s Museum

Address: Navy Pier, Chicago

Hours: Everyday: 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Free on Thursday evenings from 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.

Admission: Adults & Children (over the age of 1): $10

YAY! YAY! YAY!

• Offers hands-on learning? Yes
• Engages an active toddler in play? Yes
• Provides interaction with other children? Yes
• Allows children room to play without long waits? Yes
• Is clean? Yes

I'm struggling with this review because while it met my son's needs, it didn't really meet mine. Overall I was impressed with the execution of most of the exhibits and the strong influence of early childhood education experts, but I walked away feeling a little let down. And the fact that my son didn't have a total meltdown when we left, while a welcome change of pace, leads me to believe it wasn't a huge hit with him either.

Basically the issues are two-fold: safety (I know I’m usually a stickler for cleanliness, but safety trumps cleanliness every time) and competition. So read our review and decide if it justifies a three “YAY” rating.

The competition has us beat. It doesn't stack up very well against other children’s museums we’ve visited, namely the Indianapolis Children’s Museum. Perhaps it is not fair to compare, but it’s hard not to so I will....

Indianapolis is home to the world’s largest children’s museum, and if you haven’t been I can’t recommend it enough. But it seems like we should be able to go toe to toe with Indy. I can tell you our toes are somewhere else entirely. At the Indianapolis Children’s Museum, it’s like the Field meets Shedd meets Museum of Science & Industry meets Adler - you get the picture. And it was built nearly two decades before Kohl’s or CCM. And not to belabor the point, but its thirty year old exhibits still look fresher & newer than Kohl’s.

But CCM is heads-and-shoulders above Kohl’s Children’s Museum. CCM sees almost 4x more children per year and is ten years older than Kohl’s, but it is not nearly as a worn out and tired. The exhibits seemed fresh and clean. I thought it might have more exhibits than Kohl’s, but they both stand at eleven. I do think the exhibits are on a bigger scale & you don’t have to wait in line.

When we reached Navy Pier, we parked in the middle parking lot. This was a mistake and I recommend parking towards the front otherwise you’re in for a long walk.

After we paid our admission, we headed to the top floor and worked our way down, which I recommend since the bulk of the exhibits are on floor 3. But by the time we reached the bottom floor, I found myself thinking “Huh, that’s it?” I was a little disappointed there wasn’t more to explore.

My son did have a big time exhibit hopping on floor 3, though. You can pretend to be a firefighter, a CTA bus driver, an architect, a city planner, and inventor, and so on. It offers many playspaces where a child’s imagination can bloom. And there is a cool focus on innovation; there is even an innovation lab. While it did not have a music area, I found that overall, it really inspires a child’s creativity.

But my major qualm is safety. Because I lived downtown for the past fifteen years, I hate to admit that I did not feel safe. And it’s not just because we were trapped in the garage for twenty minutes, which actually happened & was a little terrifying. But it was a little rough around and inside Navy Pier. I make a conscious effort to expose my children to as much as possible, but I don’t like my family to feel unsafe.

I also found the museum with its open stairways to be an unsafe playspace. I can’t quite figure out what they were thinking with open, un-gated stairways instead of ramps. But I can most certainly tell you that it’s not what you want to see when you have a little boy who likes to take off running without any sense of his own mortality.

So, while it was fun to explore, we won’t be heading back in the near future.