Using Dallas Perot Museum Membership for Denver Museums

We have a family membership at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. The museum is part of the network of Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) which offers free reciprocal admission to over 350 science museums worldwide. We decided to take advantage of our Perot membership to try out 2 museums in Denver during our recent visit.

Denver Museum of Nature and Science:

I visited this museum several times as a kid growing up in Denver. It's in Denver City Park, which is a gorgeous park to visit before or after the museum.

The museum itself has changed so much since I last visited. It has become much more interactive, which is a great thing for both kids and adults.

Near the entrance:

The lobby:

It looks like the museum added on to the original building and left all the brick walls in place.

Inside the original building are all of these diorama displays that I remembered as a kid.

We started our visit in a temporary exhibit called "Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns and Mermaids." Each display had information on the origin of these mythic creatures.

While my kids liked looking at some cool dragons, unicorns and mermaids, their favorite part about this section was the puppets. They played with their own mythic creatures for a while.

And they each created their own mythic creature using stencils.

There was a green screen at the end where visitors could get a photo with a dragon or unicorn.

Next we visited the Discovery Zone kids area, which had a dinosaur bone graveyard, water play area and several other contraptions.

We also watched a kids' show called "So You Think You Can Fly."

Next, we went to a Russian gem carving display. Since our kids were born in Russia, this was a priority.

We walked through the Prehistoric Journey section and then decided to call it a day. We had been there for over 4 hours and were wiped out. Unfortunately, we didn't have a chance to see many of the other exhibits at the museum, like the Space Odyssey and the Egyptian Mummies. There is also a planetarium and an IMAX theater. Maybe next time.

The next day, we visited the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum. This museum is located in a hangar at the old Lowry Air Force Base.

We enjoyed this museum much more than we thought we would. We visited a similar museum in the Dallas area where nothing was hands-on, and my kids had a hard time with that. While there were many things that we couldn't touch here, there were still some interactive elements.

The kids each tried this Wright Brothers airplane simulator.

And they got to sit in a few planes:

We enjoyed checking out some uniform and helmet displays. The museum had a lot of information about the history of the Colorado National Guard.

The museum has a model of the Star Wars X-Wing:

And the Star Wars pod racer:

I liked this model of an airplane from the 1960s that showed the large seats of the plane and the formal attire of the passengers.

The hangar has an upstairs viewing area to see the tops of the planes. We could also walk under many of the planes.

There is a small kids play area near the movie theater up front:

An airplane bike:

We saw a 10-minute video about flying over the Rocky Mountains narrated by Harrison Ford, who apparently flies in Colorado often.

We spent about 2 hours in this museum, and it was well worth the visit.

Admission for our family into both of these museums would have cost $99.75, but was free with our Perot Museum membership. We have plans to use our Perot Membership at other museums in Florida and New York later this year. Can't wait to explore some new museums on our future trips!

Have you used a local museum membership in other cities or states?