Our lunch was a tasty course of PB&J and cheese balls. No points for guessing that. Sorry.
With full stomachs, we set out to explore the rest of the museum. We skipped a couple of big exhibits--one by choice, one by poor planning. The one we skipped by choice was
Body Worlds, which cost extra. This is the one where they take actual people's dead bodies and remove the skin or various layers of tissue, and then pose them playing poker or something. I'm sure some people think it's fascinating, but I find it really weird and creepy, and I didn't have any desire to see it. I'm guessing my kids wouldn't have done well with that, either.
The other exhibit was the
Coal Mine, and here...well, I just blew it. This is one of the most famous exhibits in the museum--you enter through an elevator made to look like a coal shaft and then get a ride in a mine car as you learn about mining operations. It's really well done, and I was looking forward to seeing it again. Unfortunately, doing the sub tour in the morning meant that by the time we were able to get to the Coal Mine, the line was a 45-minute wait. And there are no Fast Passes. With limited time to explore the museum, we didn't want to give up that time.
So, we'll just have to come back to Chicago to see it.
We found a cantilevered United airlines jet on one floor, and Dave took the opportunity to see one of the parts you don't normally get to check out up close.
One floor below us was one of the
largest model train systems in the world, depicting the journey of goods by rail from Chicago to Seattle. The level of detail in the model was amazing, and the scale was mind-boggling. It took 40 workers over a year to build it.
There were a lot of details to catch your eye. The Chicago model even had subway trains running "underground", and an elevated train in the downtown area. One spot in the mountains had a button kids could push to detonate a rock pile and help build a tunnel. Scotty kept pushing this one over and over. I was amazed that one of my sons would actually find enjoyment in blowing things up.
Nearby was Craig Breedlove's
Spirit of America rocket car, which at one point held the record for land-speed at 526 mph.
It also set a world record for the World's Longest Skid Mark (no, not that kind of skid mark. Get your mind out of the gutter).
We wandered into the massive Science of Storms exhibit next. There was a huge wind tunnel forming a funnel cloud for demonstrations, a tumbling display showing the fluid mechanics of avalanches, and a wave pool that caused Scotty to start pantomiming swimming for some reason. The exhibits looked very cool, but we didn't spend a ton of time in there because it was the most crowded room by far.
Nearby was a hall that housed a model street showing Chicago in 1893 (the year of the Columbian Exposition that created the building). It was mostly a static display, but the detail was almost as flawless as Main Street in WDW. Except not as well-lit.
We found a baby chick hatchery in another room. All together now:
Awwwwwww...
While we had done the sub tour, Tom and Cathy had taken their kids to see a demonstration of liquid nitrogen. They came back raving about it and begging us to go see the next one. So we went off to find the demonstration room, stopping to fool around in a mirror maze:
And a room with a colored-bubbly display wall. I don't know what the purpose of it was, but it looked cool. If any of you are renovating your house and want to take on a more contemporary style, maybe you can incorporate this wall. (extra charge for the kids)
The liquid nitrogen demonstration ended up being a lot of fun. It was done with a birthday party theme. First, we needed balloons. The scientists had brought some with her, already inflated and packed in liquid nitrogen. She had a helper take them out for the party. As you can see, they were as flat as the Kansas City Chiefs' offense:
As they were placed on the table and heated back to room temperature, the air inside expanded and inflated the balloons perfectly. Except for the couple that popped. Next, they poured out some liquid nitrogen so we could see it boiling at room temperature. They attached noise-makers on a bottle in order to make our party noises (less impressive than the balloons). Finally, we needed ice cream. In a large bowl, the scientist poured a mixture of milk and sugar. Then she had her helpers dump the liquid nitrogen on it. Instant ice cream! Every kid got a sample. Sarah proclaimed it "not bad".
It was approaching late afternoon, and we still had an EPIC DIS MEET® on the schedule. Tom and Cathy bid farewell and headed back to South Bend. We acted like typical Disney visitors and exited through the gift shop.
We ended up finding a few Christmas presents there. I fell for this t-shirt, the perfect nerdy souvenir:
Chicago t-shirt
On the way out, we checked out the Pioneer Zephyr, one of the first diesel-electric trains (from 1934). Sarah and Scotty got into a litte bit of trouble.
Good thing Dave was there to rescue them.
If you're ever in Chicago, go to the Museum of Science and Industry. You can easily spend a day there, and it's hands-down the best science museum we've ever seen. I severely underestimated the amount of time we'd need to see it. We'd planned on doing a river boat tour of the city as well, but there was no way we were going to have time for it. We'll just have to come back to try it again.
Why couldn't we do the boat tour? Because it was time to head downtown for our first EPIC DIS MEET® of the trip. We were about to meet...
...the FreezinRafiki family.
Barry and I had "met", of course through the DIS Dads club and got to know each other there and on Facebook. And by "got to know each other", I of course mean "antagonized each other mercilessly". Anyway, when I mentioned that we'd be driving out to Chicago, we started to plan a meet-up so we could antagonize each other in person. He and his family ended up driving down from Wisconsin in order to spend 2 days and one night hanging out in the middle of a huge city notorious for corruption with some people they only knew from the internet. Are they insane, or extremely cool?
(thinking.)
(still thinking.)
We'll go with extremely cool.
As we drove, Julie called to let them know we'd be arriving at the hotel. Barry was already there, and his family had already discovered the rooftop swimming pool. We'd meet in the lobby after checking in.
I love the Chicago skyline. It's so distinctive.
We had a scenic trip along Lakeshore Drive with the skyline in front and Lake Michigan on the right. After driving past Soldier Field (home of Da Bears), we passed Grant Park and the famous Buckingham Fountain on the left.
See that spectacular display? Remember that. We'll come back here later on.
Within minutes, we arrived at our downtown hotel: the
Best Western River North. As it turned out, this was a great place to stay. It wasn't fancy, but the rooms were huge and appeared to have been recently renovated, the price was about $100 cheaper than any other downtown hotel, it had a pool, and most critically: they offered free parking. Since that costs $40 a day anywhere else, that was a huge value. We were close to most of the downtown tourist sites and easily within reach of many more through the city's bus and train systems. A day pass for the transit system was available right at the front desk. It really worked out well.
The only downside to the parking was that you had to leave your key with the valet, and they used every available inch of the lot to park the cars. So if you were unlucky, your car would be crammed behind three others when you wanted to check out.
Anyway, we checked in, got our room keys, hauled our 17 bags/coolers/random crap into the room, and started to get settled. Then we got a call. It was Barry, letting us know that they were downstairs in the lobby. We would get this call several times over the next 24 hours, so I'm pretty sure it's the Wisconsin way of saying, "Hey slowpokes, get your lazy behinds in gear."
So, at long last, the Oblivious clan was meeting the Frozen Monkeys. We moved out of the room, piled into the elevator, and rode to the lobby. Emerging from the elevator, we walked into the lobby to find...
Coming Up Next: The EPIC DIS MEET®. And 2 intrepid explorers demonstrate the ease of properly navigating the urban jungle.
, but I'm positive that was the ship I was thinking of. If the Savannah or the Ingham were there at that point in time, I don't recall them. I know they had the boat tour you speak of and maybe some other things to see... I just remember the sub, carrier and destroyer.
I'm sorry.
