Visited the museum without children on a Friday morning. Expected there to be children's groups, but hoped it would be lighter than coming on a weekend. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a very busy day at the museum.

We enjoyed the ground floor exhibits of fish aquariums, turtles and baby alligators. The staff wandering around the exhibits were very friendly and nice, but did not seem to be experts on the exhibits. We asked what we thought were simple questions but they didn't know, apologizing profusely.

We headed upstairs, hoping to try out the interactive exhibits upstairs (a ride in the Mars Rover, and one where you sit in a chair and simulate being an astronaut working on repairs in space). Can't tell you too much about them. The Mars Rover exhibit had perhaps 100 children from a school in line ahead of us. The repairs in space (not sure what it's called), was closed, with a sign saying that it was not available to school groups and the next opening was scheduled at (blank, this section was not filled in). The only staffer I could find on the floor was working on the Mars Rover and had her hands full, so I just left it alone. There was another part of the space exhibit, but it was closed off, with repair folks working in there. There was a very small section on dinosaurs, but it was very, very small - really, just an alcove, with about 8 cases. We had expected to spend at least 1.5 hours in the museum while waiting for our IMAX movie, but ended up heading outside to kill time and escape all the happy shrieking in the museum.

The IMAX movie about the Apollo missions to the moon, Magnificent Desolation, was wonderful. The staff handed out 3-D glasses to us, and we enjoyed the movie, along with about 200 students. This movie is definitely worth seeing - gave us a look at the moon, so that we could almost imagine being there.