Yes, I know Christmas is long past, but consider this tardy post an early entry for next year’s holiday season!  Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry is well-known for its annual holiday celebration – Christmas Around the World.  We visited for the first time this year to check out the decorated trees as well as the museum’s newest exhibit, “You! the experience.”  The final verdict?  I would definitely return for the Christmas display, if not for You!

The Museum of Science and Industry is located about ten minutes from downtown Chicago. We often ride the Southshore Railroad and exit at the museum stop. The museum is also accessible via Metra from downtown. If you drive, there is a nice attached parking garage available.  Current museum hours are 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. every day except Sunday, when the facility opens at 11:00 a.m. 

Standard adult museum admission costs $15.00, which is a substantial increase from a few years ago.  Kids are $10.00.  The Christmas Around the World display is included with standard admission, but there are always several extra cost experiences.  During our recent visit these were The White House: A Look Inside ($5.00), U-505 Submarine optional on-board tour ($8.00), and Omnimax movies Wired to Win, The Human Body, and Mysteries of the Great Lakes.  Because of the museum’s large size, we rarely do the extra charge exhibits.  I will say that I saw Wired to Win in Louisville and it was fabulous. 

The Christmas Around the World display is dominated by a central giant tree flanked by dozens of trees dedicated to countries around the world.  We explored the trees in a counter-clockwise pattern.  It took about forty-five minutes to see them all, and we didn’t even read every word of the plaques detailing holiday customs in various countries.

Here are a few of the trees.  My absolute favorites were Greece (far left) and Japan (far right).  I’m not sure how “authentic” any of the trees are in terms of being what would actually be on display at the holidays in the listed countries.  They seem more like symbolic representations with iconography specific to these places.  In any event, they’re very pretty.

We had a very difficult time finding the tree for Poland, where my people are from.  Finally we reached it – it just happened to be the last one we came to!  Near the display, there is a little gift store set up where visitors can buy ornaments representative of their heritage.

After we finished admiring the trees, we headed over to check out You! the experience.  This newish exhibit is an “interactive” look at the human mind, body, and spirit.  Quite frankly, it seems a little redundant to me in that some of these themes are already touched on in the museum’s Genetics display. 

The You! gallery, while offering some interesting exhibits, suffers from many of the same problems as most displays of its type – long lines and frequent malfunctions of the interactive experiences.  We very much wanted to try a game where visitors can move a ball back and forth with their brain waves, but after waiting fifteen minutes behind a mother and son who had camped out there we gave up and moved on.  We attempted to play with a touch screen maze but found the table to be non-responsive to our touching.  I did like the simple display pictured to the bottom right which allowed guests to lift the weight gain associated with eating the pictured snacks each day for a year.  Not that it had much effect, in that I’m drinking a soda while writing this entry and will probably enjoy a candy bar shortly!

After fighting our way through the crowds at You! we stopped in to experience two of my favorite things at the Museum of Science and Industry – the Brain Food Court and Mold-A-Rama!  The museum’s food court is one of the best I’ve seen at this type of facility, offering a wide variety of tasty healthy and not-so-healthy foods.  My mom opted for the taco salad, while I had a tasty pretzel bread sandwich.  Christmas cookies were also available during our visit. 

As for Mold-A-Rama, The Museum of Science and Industry offers several different types.  This visit, I made myself a lovely grey wax U-505 submarine to add to my collection. 

We had a great day at the Museum of Science and Industry.  Although we don’t visit here as often as the Field Museum or Shedd Aquarium, we are going to make an effort to make the trip more frequently.  Perhaps we’ll go in March to see Science Storms, the soon-to-be-opened addition to the museum’s collection.

The Indianapolis Children’s Museum has always been amazing, and continues to invent and improve itself.  I personally consider this museum to be the biggest “must-see” attraction in our state for both adults and children.

While the museum is worth visiting year-round, it pumps up its offerings during late November and December.  This year’s “Jolly Days Winter Wonderland” celebration takes place daily (except for Christmas) between November 27, 2009 through January 10, 2009.  Despite having no kids in tow, we bundled up and made the drive to check out this holiday event.

The center piece of the Jolly Days activities is the “Yule Slide,” which is set up right in the middle of the museum atrium.  The line was short for the first half-hour after opening but seemed to hold constant at about fifteen minutes thereafter, so encourage your little one to bring his/her patience.  Adults can go down too although we felt strange doing it without any kiddos in tow.

From the atrium, we headed into the designated “Jolly Days” area, which is located in one of the special exhibit galleries on the second floor.  There are designated play areas for various ages, a tiny pond for “sock-skating,” an ice-fishing exhibit with velcro fish, a play kitchen (above, right) and a “stable” where children can groom fake reindeer.  This area is also home to Santa and a queuing area that leads to his home. 

While we are definitely “kids at heart,” this area was a bit much even for us.  Within an hour of museum opening time it was jam-packed with pushing, shoving, screaming, crying kids battling for space in the too-small exhibits. 

Fortunately, we fared better in the rest of the museum.  In fact, Jolly Days seems to absorb a lot of crowds, so the remaining areas of the museum were surprisingly empty for a Saturday morning.  We started by checking out Dinosphere, which was added to the museum around five years ago.  It has an actual working paleontology lab onsite and the scientist on duty was eager to answer our questions and let us touch a T-Rex leg fossil.  We also took advantage of the uncrowded craft area to create a couple of textured clay dino-heads.

We also stopped by three other major permanent exhibits: What If…, Take me There: Egypt, and The Power of Children.  What If… is one of our old favorite exhibits but, sadly, is currently the part of the museum which could most use a fresh coat of paint.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this exhibit is on someone’s list to be gutted, as several aspects of its displays (dinosaurs, Egyptian tomb) are dealt with elsewhere.

Take Me There: Egypt is promoted as the museum’s newest permanent exhibit, although I could swear some variation of it existed during my last visit a few years ago.  Be sure to take the “plane” into Egypt to maximize your immersion experience.  I think Egypt will be a huge hit with kids, as there are tons of opportunities for active play in model houses and markets.  Adults should be sure to catch the very interesting video featuring different Egyptian women and children discussing their views regarding wearing the traditional hijab.

The Power of Children is quite good, but very sad.  It follows the lives and stories of three children: Anne Frank, Ruby Bridges, and Ryan White.  Proceed with caution if taking young children.  I think the content of this gallery is very important, but parents must be prepared to explain concentration camps, AIDS, and racism which may be a lot for a five year old to handle in a single afternoon.

Finally, art lovers should not miss the very interesting Fireworks of Glass featuring artwork by Dale Chiluly.  Much of the sculpture is tucked away on the museum’s bottom floor, next to the Lilly Theater.

Overall, while the Indianapolis Children’s Museum’s Jolly Days celebration was not entirely a hit with our group of childless adults, the museum’s regular offerings were more than enough to keep us busy and happy for several hours.  If you haven’t been to this awesome museum, or if you haven’t been lately, I highly recommend making the trip.