Review Visit: November 10th, 2012…read more Where a kid can be a kid and where an adult can also be a kid. If you are wondering, I don't have any explanation why 3 adults visited a museum that is geared towards kids besides that we are all kids at heart and like to have silly fun. With that in mind, Erin, Matt, and I checked out the Children's Discovery Museum. I'm not sure exactly how we ended up wanting to explore the Children's Discovery Museum but I am glad we did. None of us have kids so it was a bit weird that 3 grown adults were walking about this museum and playing with the stuff as if we were kids, but we were never told to not play with the stuff as well. We did avoid the stuff that our adult size might break or render unusable. Overall, I don't have much to say about this place since it's been so long and I can't remember all the activities and interactive things they had. I will say that if you have kid(s), they will love this place. If you have kids and are a kid at heart, you AND your kid(s) will have a blast here.

Adorable little shopping location for the kiddos! The staff help me pick out a gift for the kid I…read moream babysitting. Shoutout to employees for going above and beyond!

It has been celebrated in song, story, poem, and yes, even a Route 66 TV show (1960-1964); historic…read moreU.S. Route 66 was established in 1926 and ran east-west across the central United States. According to the popular song "Route 66" by John Mayer "...it winds from Chicago to LA, more than two thousand miles all the way". 2448 miles or 3,940 KM to be precise. Tourist attractions designed to get a motorist to take a break from their journey (and spend some cash) along "the mother road" or the "main street of America" are scattered here and there among the small towns that are found along Route 66. One of these attractions is the Route 66 Arcade Museum located in the prototypical small town of Atlanta, IL. At the Route 66 Arcade Museum it is possible to misspend your youth all over again; one quarter at a time! The Museum is chock full of vintage pinball and video games from the 1930's-1970's. The Route 66 Arcade Museum is only open during the tourist season April through September. The museum is opened and closed by a third party but is usually open from 9am 4pm in season. Hours are currently impacted by IL state COVID-19 regulations for entertainment businesses so please check before your visit.

The Route 66 Museum is great and close to the other attractions in Atlanta. There is a pride in…read moretheir history that shows. Every one we spoke with at every stop in town was kind and knowledgeable.

This museum is so well done! The facades of Lincoln's boyhood home and the White House greet you in…read morethe main atrium. Volunteers are plentiful and enhance the experience throughout. There are two main movies that are outstanding. The special effects make learning about history very fun and engaging. Throughout there are life sized displays of scenes from Lincoln's life. Husband is the big history buff but I have to say, I really enjoyed the experience. It's well worth the stop. Parking is in a ramp across the street from the museum. We got the senior rate at $12, otherwise it's $15. We spent about couple of hours in the museum.

Well worth the time (give yourself at least 90 minutes) and the price of admission. The displays…read moreare well done and informative. The docents/volunteers are excellent, everyone that we talked to was warm, informed and clearly enjoyed their time with us patrons. The day we were there two musicians were playing period music. They were very good, and while it did get a little personally annoying, it did really put you in time and place for the subjects. Both of the relatively short theater presentations are worthwhile, so plan accordingly so you can watch both. There was one display depicting the slavery auction block. It is a gut punch to anyone with a human heart, regardless of your outer wrapping.

Passing through McClean, IL and I never realized I would pass through an Arcade Museum here. You…read morewalk in and there are about 4 rooms full of arcade games! That's it! Nothing but arcade games. Couple places to exchange your money, a juke box, and games of every kind! I had fun with the pinball machine and was very excited to test those out. There is also a pinball machine museum across the way, I think the same owners. I couldn't believe it. This day, there wasn't anyone working there, per-say. They are open and left unattended at times. They don't serve any food or drinks, it's just games. Also, come with money. They don't have an ATM there. Nostalgia city is what it feels likes. Games from when I was a kid are side by side. I played pinball and felt as giddy as I did as a young child. This is well kept, clean and tidy, and the games are in great condition.

I highly recommend this place. The most that games cost is 75 cents. A majority of them cost 50…read morecents. They have the Starwars Trilogy Arcade from the 90's, Ferrari F355 Challenge that uses a lifelike gear box and a clutch pedal, and many more. My kids and I had a blast.

Great museum that offers three spaces in one location. Enjoy space, art and history. My tip is…read morewatch a movie be sure to check out what is playing.

When one has a rain day, one goes exploring. My exploration led me to this museum. A friend had…read morerecommended it. It was $20.00 admission fee for adults and extra for the laser light show. I spent an hour and a half looking at the various exhibits and enjoyed all of them. I found them to be interesting and informative. The "911" exhibit was rather tough to experience at times as video coverage, newsprint, and ground zero artifacts soberly reminded me of the awful times and devastating loss of lives of that day.. For those who are interested in archeology, there was a very interesting gallery titled, The Amethyst Gallery of Minerals. There were exhibits of beautiful minerals - Fluorites, mostly mined in Illinois, and also a 10 foot Geode lined with quartz amethyst which was discovered in Artigas, Uruguay, in 2021. There was a gallery titled, The Promise of Liberty, which included interesting documents including Indian Treaties from 1744, books Thomas Paine's Common Sense and The Federalist. There was also the display of The Four Freedoms illustrated by Norman Rockwell. Later, I watched a 30 minute laser light show themed as "Laser Halloween". I couldn't really recommend it as at least half of it had nothing to do with Halloween and the music selection was pretty bad - I mean how can you not have Michael Jackson's "Thriller" as one of the songs?! Nope! Overall, a good experience and worth checking out. There's a gift shop and a separate theatre that has shows at various times and days. It's best you check their website for times, and you can also purchase tickets online.

What an amazing place for kids to explore and create! We spent three hours at this large former…read morehouse, with its 2.5 stories of exhibits. There is a tool section where you can dabble with building, create a puppet, a fossil area, a ball area, farming and the list goes on. They are closing in September and October for renovations. Can't wait to see the new additions on our next visit!

Super quaint little exploration center for kids in Peoria is great! It's small enough to be easy to…read morenavigate. Lots for the kids to do and plenty of benches for caregivers to sit. The air exhibit was particularly fun for our 3.5 year old. Tickets are easy to purchase and very low priced. Well worth the price! It wasn't too busy so we kind of had the run of the place. 10/10 would take the family back!

We reserved a free tour at Eventbrite. Jennifer brought 15 of us through this massive, historic…read morehome. She pointed out specific pieces, told stories about the owners & was very knowledgeable about Frank Lloyd Wrights work. We started our tour with a brief video about the glass work. We went into several sitting areas, Dana's bedroom, nursery, dining room, pantry & kitchen.library, bowling alley & billiards room. The 3rd largest home Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed. this remarkably preserve Prairie School icon dates from 1902 until 1904. It's more interesting than his home in Oak Park. The 16 floor home was considered experimental with a duckpin bowling alley & 2 barrel vaulted ceiling's. There is exquisite color shifting art glass & 90% of the furniture is original. Susan Lawrence Dana (1862-1946) was an heiress to a silver mines fortune . She was widow in 1900 & had complete control over her household & fortune. She was a leading philanthropic figure in Springfield. Dana decided to completely remodeled her home commissioning Frank Lloyd Wright. Her new home reflected her flamboyant personality & was designed for display & entertainment. The concept of "expanding space" was evident throughout the house with windows placed to continually draw the attention to the outside. Wright designed approximately 450 art glass windows, skylights, door panels, sconces & light fixtures for the house. The interior Torii gates are magnificent.hallway into two of the largest rooms in the house. The musical gallery for entertaining and the library contains special easels. Wright designed white oak furniture for Dana to display Japanese prints. In1928, Dana had dementia & financial constraints. In1944, the home and its contents were sold to Charles C. Thomas, a medical publisher. Thomas lived here & used this home as his publishing company. He sold the house to the state for a million dollars. It became a historic site. Jennifer shared that the house is still being utilized for social community events.

This was so cool! What an amazing experience! This was my first Wright house, and I'm not sure it…read morecan be topped! I understand why photos aren't allowed inside, but I was expecting more postcards depicting the various rooms to be available in the gift shop. There was cool stuff, for sure, but more postcards of the interior would be great since photos aren't allowed. My tour guide was Allicent and she did a great job talking about all the artistic and architectural features of the home. There was also a video at the beginning about the manufacture of some of the glass. I was sorry that the intro video didn't tell us more about the historical and social context of Mrs Dana, but I imagine most visitors would be more interested in the architectural technique. My only complaint with my tour is that there were two little kids on it. They were like 3 and 5. They were totally distracting the whole time--talking, whining, trying to grab at things. I'm not sure why the museum has such strict rules about other things but also allows in kids under 12. There's nothing they could possibly glean from the tour. It's really not designed for kids. Nor should it be!

Another five star review. There are three museums to tour here: the house; the rock and gem museum;…read moreand apparently the farm tools. Figure an hour per museum; I only had time for two. The docent lives on-site and is passionate about the Funk family; there was almost too much information about the family (perhaps as I was touring the house with two Funk family members in town for a reunion). I've toured a lot of Victorian houses, but one of the things that's interesting about this one is the amount of innovation you'll see highlighted here. This starts in the garden, where there is a small power plant (the farm had electricity in the early 1900s, before parts of Chicago), and is continued as you learn to know the family, whether they be inventors of hybrid seeds, or rock afficianados. Unlike many houses, here you can get close to things; there are no velvet ropes or plastic barriers, except one to keep you out of the servants' stairs. So you can look close up at the hat pins or beaded bags on the dressers. Ask questions - you can't stump this docent. (We had a discussion about concrete and its use in the fence and the caretaker's building which was really quite interesting. If you have engineer friends, they will love this tour.) The rock museum features some truly impressive fossils, some of which you might be allowed to touch! There's a dragonfly fossilized in ash; coprolite (look it up), and dinosaur bone (apparently fairly common?). There's a whole wall of different types of calcite; giant gorgeous blue and purple fluorite specimens; lit-from-the-back beautiful agates and rubies in zoisite; and in the NEXT room (!) two or three cabinets of beautiful Chinese carved soapstone, and a collection of sleighs. The finale is a cabinet full of fluorescing rocks, including melted glass from a nuclear reactor. Made me wish this museum had a gift shop, though the docent will be happy to give you recommendations for good local rock shops. This is a really great museum hidden in the cornfields. Worth a trip - I drove two hours to get here, thinking I was coming for the rocks, but the house was almost/ just as good.

Totally recommended - A wonderfully preserved house and grounds and our guide was able to bring the…read morewhole place to life with his insight and knowledge of the Funk family and their incredible history - and then in the Gem Museum we saw further dimensions to him as he walked us through this small fragment ( 20% ) of the massive and impressive collection gathered from all corners of the World.

This museum is now called the Air Combat museum. It's located in a nondescript, small hanger at the…read moreairport. It has a small, but amazing collection of aircraft. We stopped by on a Friday afternoon and were the only visitors. Christopher took his time telling us about several of the aircraft. We learned so much! Don't miss this free museum if you have any interest in aircraft!

This is a small private collection. But there are a couple…read moreof pieces such as a corsair and a P51 mustang that make it worth the visit.

I went to this cute art center the other day to pass some time, and I really enjoyed it. Although…read moreit is limited on exhibits, I really enjoyed the work on display. The exhibits were clean and well organized. There is a small gift shop here as well if you are looking for something artsy to give as a gift. I would definitely come here again.