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.