When looking for fun, kid-friendly activities to do in Oregon, Evergreen Aviation Museum and Wings and Waves Waterpark offered complimentary tickets to explore their attractions. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Today I’m sharing all about the Evergreen Aviation Museum. But, you’ve got to hop on over to read about my experience at the Wings and Waves Waterpark! To learn more about sponsored content on this blog please ready my policies page. Thank you for supporting the companies that help make this blog happen!
The Evergreen Aviation Museum is HUGE. I mean, you have a ton of planes all over the place so the venue has to be huge. I’d highly recommend planning to peruse the museum for the entire day. It is important to plan a day at the museum to get your money’s worth as well. The price of admission is a tad more than what I would normally spend on an outing with my kids at $19 per child and $29 per adult. However, admission includes entry to Aviation Museum, Space Museum, & one movie. There are a lot of attractions and we absolutely enjoyed the stay enough to go again.
Highlights of the Aviation Museum
My son is really into both cars and planes right now. His age made this a prime attraction. Our favorite parts of the Aviation Museum included:
The educational and interactive plane exhibit
To the left of the admission stand as you enter the museum is an exhibit filled with plane related educational and interactive attractions. My son couldn’t wait to get into this section of the museum! We honestly spent a large portion of our visit here as it was fun going through each of the exhibits, playing and learning. You also get the opportunity to sit in a cockpit… everyone had to take a turn!
The Spruce Goose
This plane is a sight to be seen for sure! We loved the Spruce Goose exhibit as it included a miniature replica of the building of the plane as well as a great informational video. It as the perfect place to sit for a rest after walking around the museum a bit and enjoy learning more about this amazing plane.
The early flight exhibit
It is incredibly inspiring to see how far we’ve come in flying over the years. Getting to see those first airplane styles and read about the way they worked and the people that flew them was incredible.
Highlights from the Space Museum
My favorite of the two museums was hands down the Space Museum, perhaps because space exploration has been so prevalent in my youth. I remember watching as a we launched rocket ships into space. Getting to learn more about the different missions and the tools that are used in space exploration was the most fun I’ve ever had at a museum.
The playground
My son’s absolute favorite part of the museum was the large playground right outside of the Space Museum. He liked pretending he was an astronaut in the spaceship play structure.
The Titan II Missile and Launch Sequence
Walking down the missile silo of the Titan II Missile exhibit is humbling to say the least. This thing was massive. At the bottom of the silo was a launch room with a automated sequence you could experience what the controllers must have experienced at launch.
Tips for visiting the Evergreen Aviation Museum
Timing: I don’t think that I can stress this enough. Plan and prepare for a whole day of fun at these museums. There was so much to see and do throughout the two museums. We tried doing the museum visits and the waterpark all in one day and ended up not being able to make it to the theater or really spend quite as much time as we would have liked at any one of the exhibits.
Lunch: If you are going to spend all day at the museums you are going to want to eat. There are cafes in each of the museums and you can certainly get a full lunch at either. We enjoyed the food at the cafe in the Aviation museum, however, we also spent quite a bunch of money! If you plan ahead and don’t want to buy a full lunch at the cafes then I’d recommend bringing a picnic lunch to have on the grounds of the museum. There are plenty of outdoor picnic areas!
Babies: Bring a stroller! We both wore our carrier and brought our stroller. I was so glad that we had the stroller. The museum is gigantic and we wanted to see it all. The stroller was handy for our bags and for the kiddo to get in a good nap.
Have you ever been to the Evergreen Aviation Museum? If so, what was your favorite exhibit?
