My Completely Honest Review of The City Museum in St. Louis

It’s Spring Break time here in Indiana.  My kids have 2 glorious weeks off. (We are on a balanced calendar schedule, so our break is a little earlier than most schools.)  It’s definitely not warm! It’s the first day of Spring, and it snowed. I’m a nurse who works with lots of other moms of school aged children, so taking time off during school breaks is a precious commodity.  This year, I took ½ of the first week off so I could spend some time with my 12 year old twins. Their almost 17 year old brother is on a church mission trip this week. So I decided to take the twins to St. Louis rather than sit around the house and fight for 3 days.  Might as well fight in another city!

I’ve heard lots of good things about the City Museum, and did a little research.  The day I planned to go I woke up in the hotel room with the worse case of vertigo ever.  I’ve never had this before, and don’t know what cause it. I’m saying I was dehydrated from driving all day the day before, then not drinking any water the rest of the day.  Who knows?!? So we got a much later start than I had planned. Our hotel was on the south side of town, so by the time we got downtown it was a little past noon. I knew the museum closed at 5:00, so we’d have at least 4 hours there.  It was a very cloudy cold day. The website mentioned the serpent parking lot that charges $10. I totally missed that lot, but ahead was a giant sign that said MUSEUM PARKING and a guy waving a flag. I totally fell for the flag waving, and thankfully we pulled into a ground floor spot.  When I went to pay it was $15, which I wasn’t going to complain about. It was covered parking and there were free dum-dum suckers for the kids! So we left the garage and it started raining (of course I left my hooded coat in the car because I didn’t want to carry it), then the flag waving guy comes running out to tell us we are walking the wrong way (of course).  So the walk to the museum in the rain took even longer. We finally find the group entrance and walk around until we find the area to pay. I’m soaked and now carrying 2 wet sweatshirts!

We paid our admission fee of $14 each person.  Our total was $45.86. We were each given a City Museum bracelet to wear.  They recommend writing your phone # on your kids bracelets...highly recommend.  I saw 3 lost kids in the time we were there….one hysterically sobbing...and two normal frightened/lost kids.  There’s also a sign reading “NO WI-FI. PLAY WITH YOUR CHILDREN”. Also note there are no physical maps. I’m guessing this saves paper and money.  But I have no idea if we saw everything in the museum or not. There is a large outdoor climbing/play area that was closed due to weather. We were bummed about this.  The outside climbing area looks like lots of fun and would make for some great photos!

There are tons of tunnels, slides, crawling mazes, and places kids can pop out of.  Some of them you have no idea how they got there. You look up and there are kids above you….pretty strange.  I’m a tall mom (6’) and I’m training for a mini marathon so my knees are not in the best shape right now. Also the vertigo was better, but I was definitely not feeling 100%.  There’s no way I could have crawled through any of these tunnels. Also the darkness kind of freaked me out. Luckily I have 2 12 year olds, so I told them they had to stay together at all times.  And I showed them where I’d be waiting. Every time they found me! I would not have sent younger kids or kids by themselves through these. I saw a few loyal dads with knee pads on, and I saw a few freaked out moms because they had no idea where their kids were.  There are multiple slides in the museum. The slides were my boys favorite parts. Crawling to them not so much. They were definitely sweaty after a couple of slides, and they are both in pretty good shape. I was a chubby, not in shape kid growing up, and there is no way I could have done half of the stuff in this museum when I was a kid!  Seriously! Also if I had younger kids, I don’t think I would have let them climb by themselves. Like I said I saw 3 lost kids in the time we were there.

After being there for close to 2 hours, they said they were ready to go. I talked them into some food hoping they’d get a second wind.  We got 2 small pizzas, 3 waters, and 2 chips for the price of $25.25. The pizza was a cracker like crust, and my kids did not enjoy it.  I carried around 2 boxes of pizza the rest of the day because I’d just spent $25!! I talked them into walking around a little more. We found a couple areas we hadn’t seen yet.  There was a warp wall which my boys enjoyed climbing and another slide. That lasted maybe another 30 minutes. And that’s all I could squeak out of them. By this time they were more than ready to go.  So we took another rainy walk to the parking garage (we took the right way the first time), and went back to our hotel.

*We totally missed the circus.  I think we would have enjoyed watching it.

*The roof was closed for the season.  I’m sure it’s open in the summer.

*Having the outside part open would have been way more enjoyable for my kids.

*We bought nothing at the gift shop.  My boys didn’t even want to look inside!

*No one in my party got lost!

*Total spent $86.11

So that’s this mom’s take on the City Museum.  When I asked my boys if they’d go back they said only if they could play outside.