Science Museum of Minnesota

This last summer my family traveled to Minneapolis two different weekends. We wanted to do some fun things on our visit, and after making a requisite visit to IKEA we went to the Science Museum of Minnesota.

This is a pretty large museum with lots of things for kids and families to do. The museum is closed on Mondays, but opens every other day at 9:30am. It closes at 5pm on Sun, Tue, and Wed and then it closes at 9:30pm on Thu, Fri, and Saturday.

The parking is based on how long you stay in the garage, 0-30 minutes:   $1, 31-59 minutes:  $5,  1 hour - 1 hour 59 minutes: $7, 2 hours - 2 hours 59 minutes:  $9, 3 hours - 11 hours 59 minutes: $10. There were plenty of spots available.

Admission to the museum is $13 for adults 13-59 years old, and $10 for kids 4-12 and seniors 60+ (free for 3 and under). It costs an additional $7 a person to add an omnitheatre show. They sell annual memberships starting at $99 for households. The nice thing is that they do reciprocating memberships and our membership at the Kansas City Science City got us in for free.

There are lockers and strollers available for a small fee.

You enter the museum on the 5th floor and this floor is a little small on exhibits, though it is where the omnitheatre is (which is a 9 story high rotating dome that shows IMAX movies). They had an area about the Mississippi River Gallery and a huge photograph of Minneapolis on the floor that was fun to walk all over and see different parts of the city. Outside on this floor was an old Mississippi River tugboat that you could climb in, when the weather is nice outside, and have a nice view of the city.

The 4th floor has a cell lab where you can look at your own cheek cells under a microscope or learn about chromosomes. There is also a mummy on this floor, which was cool.

On the 3rd floor is a section on dinosaurs, with a cool huge triceratops. There is also a puzzle type thing to put together bones and make your own dinosaur skeleton. Also on this floor was Future Earth, an exhibit that showed humans' effect on the earth, which several hands on activities. There was a self quiz that I sort of liked by my son got bored of quickly.

The second floor has classrooms and the first floor has the seasonal Big Back Yard.  When we went it was open and it has a water area (filling tubes with different sizes of stone to see how fast it  comes out. My son loves loves loves all this with water, he enjoyed this part. There is also a garden and there were different plants (mostly vegetables and herbs) growing and a mini maze to walk through. And also outside was a mini golf course but it cost an additional $4.50 for adults and $3 for kids and senior, so we skipped it. In addition there was a panning for gold sluice with a cost that we also didn't do.

In additional to exhibit type stuff there are restrooms on every floor, a coffee shop on the 5th floor, a deli on the third floor, and a cafe on the sixth floor. A gift store was on the 5th floor as well.

The place wasn't too crowded and we all thought the place was well done. We'd definitely return when we're in the area again.

Recommend this product? Yes

Best Suited For: Families
Best Time to Travel Here: Anytime