Fire Museum

Today we visited the Fire Museum for the first time ever. The boys were invited to a birthday party by one of their schoolmates. I didn't really know what to expect, but I was excited as I had heard good things about the museum.

As we arrived, Luke's dad (who's "100% Japanese" according to Satchel) ushered us into the building on the right and said we had an hour to play. The museum had three large fire trucks to climb on and an ambulance to explore through glass on one side and a crowd pleasing talking horse and two old timey non-climbable fire trucks on the other side.

My first impression was that someone noticed how popular the fire engine is at the Children's Museum and said, "Hey, let's do that on a bigger scale." They had the tiny firefighter jackets and hats hanging on hooks for the kids to wear and everything. (One of the jackets was in pretty sad shape. I was very impressed later in the morning when one of the employees noticed and said, "Is that one of ours? I need to fix that.")

The kids loved climbing all over the trucks and they seemed to have carte blanche to climb wherever they wanted, unlike at CMOM.


There was also a (shortened) fire pole to slide down, which was super fun.


And the aforementioned talking horse. (It was way too loud for me to actually hear anything he was saying, but I believe it was safety/history related.)


It looks kind of real in that picture (and real life) but it isn't.

The ambulance exhibit was a little bizarre--most of the kids looked at it for a few seconds before running off towards something more exciting.


Here's Jiro with the birthday boy. One day at school last week, L came up to me teary eyed and said, "Jiro said he won't be my best friend anymore." They seem to have a love/hate relationship as they went from hugging each other to kicking each other and back again in the span of the two hour party. At one point L went up to his dad and said sorrowfully, "Jiro says this is HIS birthday party!"


Satchel, who was concerned that this was going to be a "baby party" didn't seem to mind that he was one of the oldest kids there.


Several times the monkeys tried to escape through the doors in order to find L's gift and give it to him prematurely. I think if we had visited the museum without 10 of their other friends they may have easily seen and done all they wanted to do in 15 minutes.

Jiro (of course) needed to make a potty run, so we went up to the third floor. The bathrooms were super nice, and there also seemed to be another room full of pictures and info on firefighters--maybe this was the tribute to fallen firefighters I read about. There was also a big simulator room that seemed to be a big game dealing with safety. Jiro and I pushed all of the buttons, but nothing happened. I don't know if it was off or broken.

When it was time to eat cake and open presents we went across a walkway into another building. Inside was a gift shop and what looked like a giant display of toy fire trucks. There was also another large (non-climbable) fire truck.

The party room was really nice--it came equipped with balloons and plastic fire hats. And each kid got a goodie bag that actually had decent stuff inside--a large plastic dalmatian piggy bank, a pencil with a fire hat eraser, a button, a magnet, and a sticker (all with fire museum branding). We also visited the restrooms in this building and they were very clean.

The Fire Museum seemed like a really nice place to have a party (especially if your kid likes fire trucks) or pop in for a quick visit while on a trolley ride. It was just around the corner from the downtown fountains, and we might have gone by there if I had thought to bring the monkeys' bathing suits.