We recently travelled to Kansas for a family reunion. We flew into Kansas City, MO and had some time to kill before the rest of the family arrived. We took that opportunity to check out the city and specifically Science City – Kansas City, MO.
I’ve talked before about how much we love our local McWane Science Center and how having a membership there has been awesome. McWane is part of the ASTC Passport Program which means that other centers in the same group offer discounted or free access to their museums when you visit. When I realized we’d have so many hours before our other family arrived in Kansas, I immediately went to McWane’s site to see if there was ASTC place nearby and saw that Science City was in Kansas City and our McWane membership got us in 100% for free! We thought we’d check it out. When we pulled up, it looked like a museum in New York or on TV it was really exciting.
We parked and saw the backside of Union Station.
It was awesome looking outside but inside was just marvelous. It’s inside of an old train station. There are restaurants and shops as well as the Amtrak station. We stopped at a place called Harvey’s for lunch in the center of the station. Harvey was one of the names we brought to the hospital with us when our son was born but it just didn’t fit when we met him, however I still love it and the name always peaks my interest. The food was great and the atmosphere was just cool. The station had beautiful architecture and art, it was wonderful.
Down the hall we found the nearly hidden entrance to Science City. We found out that the outside area had only opened about a month ago and the people at the front desk were giving us the scoop on all the best parts and what to do with the kids in our short time there.
This place was awesome!
I’ve been disappointed by some of the other places we’ve visited in that they don’t compare to our awesome McWane Center but I daresay this place was better. It was set up like a city and had different sections all based around learning and science.
Of course we had to check out the Dinosaur area, I think my son only wore dino shirts on the trip.
They also had a reptile area which he freaked out about because he loves lizards and snakes.
They liked the outside area but it was pretty hot and a lot of the stuff was for older kids besides this big enclosed climbing area. My son almost climbed to the very top of it, which is very unusual for him.
They had an area where you could learn about and explore HVAC vents. The kids loved going through the “tunnel”. We each took our turns scaring our kids as they came out of the tunnel and Stephen even went so far as to climb in through the other side and scare the crap out of our son from behind. We don’t typically like sneaking up on one another but it was so fun and great memories. My son keeps saying, “remember when you scared me daddy” and then he laughs and laughs.
Overall this place was so awesome! We only had to pay for parking and we did let the kids pick out a toy / souvenir from the gift shop at the end. My son picked a snake and my daughter picked a pencil, pencil sharpener and space notebooks! So fun! It was just an awesome experience and really memorable for all of us. If you don’t have local memberships in your area to science centers or zoos, you should check it out because they can be really valuable for your day-to-day life and allow you to visit a lot of cool places. It would have cost us about half of what our entire year membership is at McWane and we get to visit both places! If we visit McWane 2.5 times, the membership pays for itself and we usually go multiple times a month. Same with our local Birmingham Zoo. If you are ever in Kansas, City, check out Science City and the rest of the city seems like a place we could go back and explore more one day.
Gina & Freya says
To skip paying for parking, I recommend parking at Crown Center and get their parking “ticket” and park and then go to the second floor and go to the little free kid play area (right now it’s Thomas The Train) and get a ticket validation then walk through “The Link” to Union Station (For some cool pictures as well) and then go to Science City. Then you go through back you came and go to a machine and you’ll have 3 hours free parking. If you go on a Saturday, usually Crown Center Parking is free already. But yes, Science City is fun. There are scheduled events that happen as well from making Ice cream with Nitrogen, to making items at the Maker Space (Ig: Pet rock and carrier) to details such as building demo bridges, to dissection. If you have an science question, any of the staff members are happy to help with an answer.