Clean, friendly and outgoing staff, lots of exhibi...

Clean, friendly and outgoing staff, lots of exhibits that are all operable - we had a blast yesterday at the Carnegie Science Center!!

We arrived around 1 PM on a Wednesday afternoon, and the museum had only a handful of visitors anywhere we happened to be throughout our time there. I m sure it is much, much more crowded on the weekends, so my advice is: be able to breathe and roam leisurely by going during the week! We are currently homeschoolers (took my 5 and 7 year old boys), so I know that may be easier said than done for most, but if you re able to sign your kids out of school for a day to take your own educational field trip, this is definitely worth it!

The boys loved the miniature train set-up - it s huge and is super well taken care of! The H2oh! area was really nice, especially the section with the wildlife (most PA natives, some not). The fish tanks were beautiful - sparkling clean! It was such a joy to behold the fish, reptiles, amphibians, and so much more. There was even a very well taken care of microscope area, with specimens neatly ready to observe...or, just put your hand under and check out your skin and hair follicles! It was great because the images appear brilliantly clear on a screen in front of you - no hassle of gaping down a tube for little ones!

We saw the Mars Madness show at the Buhl Planetarium - it was wonderful! There was a live introduction to the show, with fun audience participation (props to the man who entertained our group! Top-notch!), then the show itself was high quality and very informative and interesting.

One of my favorite areas, which of course we didn t visit until the tail end of our time at the Center(!), was the BodyWorks section. So, so many fascinating, hands-on exhibits about the human body! Again, everything extremely clean and perfectly operable.

We also went through the USS Requin submarine, which is included in your admission price to the Center. It was very cool to walk through the narrow passageways, to get a glimpse of the living and working quarters of 80 Navymen!

We ve been to a few other childrens museums, and this tops the list so far! I feel like we d need another whole day or two to really take in everything the museum has to offer, and even then, I d still come back more often if we didn t live two and a half hours away!

Kudos to you, Carnegie Center! We ll be back :)