St. Louis Museum Offers Thrills, Chills, and Lawsuits 140
theodp writes "Despite the whiff of danger, or perhaps because of it, the WSJ reports that the City Museum is one of St. Louis's most popular attractions. Housed in a 10-story brick building, the City Museum shows none of the restraint or quiet typical of most museums. It boasts a five-story jungle gym with two real-life jets kids can climb on, an enclosed Monster Slide that drops riders the length of three staircases, and a rooftop Ferris wheel. Sure, there are the occasional severed fingers and skull fractures, but museum founder Bob Cassilly contends that it is as safe as it can be without being a bore. 'They [lawyers] are taking the fun out of life,' says Cassilly, adding that 'when you have millions of people do something, something's going to happen no matter what you do.'"
Scary indeed! (Score:5, Informative)
Kids? (Score:4, Informative)
It boasts a five-story jungle gym with two real-life jets kids can climb on, an enclosed Monster Slide that drops riders the length of three staircases, and a rooftop Ferris wheel.
Kids? Every time I've been there there has been a significant percentage of 20-somethings in addition to the little ones.
Re:Kids? (Score:3, Informative)
Kids? Every time I've been there there has been a significant percentage of 20-somethings in addition to the little ones.
The museum requires [citymuseum.org] that all children are accompanied by an adult, and groups of kids must have adults in at least a 1:6 adult to child ratio. Also, it sounds like it would be fun for adults as well :-D
Re:Two dozen out of how many? (Score:2, Informative)
else we'll have a whole generation who never really grow up into proper adults
Too late.
Superb place to visit (with pics) (Score:5, Informative)
I want to add myself to the list of fans of this admirable place....
Here's a set of photos of the St. Louis Museum [facebook.com] I took earlier this year.
The experience of climbing the spiral staircase, while listening to live music from the massive pipe organ was almost surreal...
One of the MUST SEE places in STL (Score:2, Informative)
Not only is the place a great playground for kids and adults alike, but some of the examples of architecture and industry that is displayed and incorporated into the Museum is beautiful and amazing to anyone who is into that kind of thing. The terracotta architectural pieces are totally rad.
One of the coolest 'exhibits' in the CM is "Caves". Nine stories of concrete and steel, molded into caves to explore. Walk along and see a hole in the wall...crawl in and see where it goes. Some spaces were tight enough to scare me, some passages went down and I found myself crawling through a rebar tunnel on a ceiling 20ft above people on the floor. There's a couple spiral slides that drop down through 4 or 5 stories. And the last time I went there was an automatic pipe organ that seemed to fill every spare inch of space in the building pumping out circus music, along with a bank of robotic percussion instruments behind some steel grate.
If you go to STL for any reason and you are between the ages of 1 and 101, you have to go. You won't be disappointed.
He's not done yet. (Score:4, Informative)
There's an old industrial site north of downtown that Casilly wants to turn into a water park with the same ethos. It's stuck in permit hell, but I'll continue to hold out hope.
Re:Two dozen out of how many? (Score:1, Informative)
...else we'll have a whole generation who never really grow up into proper adults.
That's already happened. Thanks helicopter parents! [psychologytoday.com]
Not for the timid (Score:2, Informative)
I have to agree with others that it is a must see.