We looped a pickup at Union Station in Chicago into a trip to the Field Museum. It is a great museum and worth the trip—but plan well!
Admission to the Field Museum is $15 for adults and $10 for kids 3 and up. This means our family would pay $50 to get in for the day. Yikes!
But this didn’t bother us because our admission was free using our Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) Membership. It cost us $75 to get an annual family membership at the MPM. We just saved 2/3 of the cost of our membership on one visit to the Field. Did we mention that a Membership is worth it (see Moohlah Tips)?
Parking was a bit of a guessing game for us. We haven’t been to the Field often, so following all the signs wasn’t always the easiest. But with patience we got onto the right access road and up to the parking level. Here we were flummoxed for a bit when it seemed like there wasn’t any parking left. Then we took a chance and followed another car that seemed to be heading into a different section that wasn’t obviously related to the Field Museum. The section was empty. It was legal. We were parked! A few minutes later, we were climbing the marble steps to the Field. Parking is a steep fee: $19 the first 4 hours and $22 for up to 12 hours. We are not aware of any alternative if you drive into town as there didn’t appear to be the option for street parking near the museum.
Knowing how expensive museum meals tend to be, we packed a picnic basket. We left our cooler in the car and when we were ready for lunch, Daddy-O ran out to the car and used his stamped hand to get back in—Easy Cheesy! We ate in the designated basement food area and paused for a minute for Daddy-O to run the picnic stuff back to car before resuming our tour. There are plenty of cafeteria style tables in the basement level for your use. If you choose to purchase museum food, there is a McDonalds in the basement along with plenty of snack machines. The main level has a Museum café.
The Field is Huge. We can’t even imagine adults without kids seeing it all in one day. We highly recommend picking a few choice sections and limiting your visit to these areas. Save the rest of the Museum for your next trip out. There are a lot of stairs at the Field and elevators are not easy to find. As we watched parents hauling strollers up the stone stairwells, we were very glad that we no longer had children that young.
Overall, we don’t recommend the Field for kids under 5 years of age. In addition to the stroller troubles, the exhibits are really geared toward older kids. Our 3 year old had fun but we could tell he experienced it much differently than visits to other museums. He was very easily distracted and just cruised by exhibit after exhibit. At our favorite MPM, he stops, observes, engages, and lingers. The Field was too much for him.
Although we appreciate the efforts of the Field to update displays and to try to remain ‘current’, we found they went overboard with the use of video terminals. We were repeatedly dragging our youngest away from the video screens and struggling to get him to look at the actual dinosaur bones that were our focus. In the Field’s effort to be ‘modern,’ they actually decreased the interactivity with the video displays.
There are at least four gift shops in the Field. We recommend picking one that looks good and just doing your shopping there. Or you could spend all day following your kids from one shop to the next.
We loved the Field and we look forward to going back!