National Museum of Crime & Punishment

For my birthday, we visited the National Museum of Crime & Punishment. I don't feel like I got my $15 ticket price out of it. The audio tour is an extra $4 per person, so be aware of this.

The tickets are time-based, which is good b/c the museum can't handle very many people in each room at one time. The crowd control ropes outside the front doors are made of handcuffs..cute. Once you get inside, it's not obvious of where to go to start looking at the exhibits. If you bought your tickets over the web, you simply go to the turnstile over in the corner, scan the ticket and go in. All the way through the museum you have to look around corners to see if you missed a little cubby hole or the way to the next room...the flow is not very obvious. There is also only one path through the museum...you can't skip anything altogether (sure, you can walk fast and not look at anything, but you have to go through the room). The rooms are more like slightly large hallways. This means that if one person is reading one wall and someone else is reading another wall, its likely that the path is completely blocked and you have to wait for someone to move. I was disappointed that several of the interactive exhibits were not functioning. For example, the wild west shooting game was not working (which, by the way, costs money to buy tokens). Only one of the police chase simulators was working (and it gave me incredible vertigo. You have to floor the accelerator to get the car moving, steering wheel motions have a delayed response on the screen, causing over reactions, and the brake causes the car to stop instantly unlike a real car). The 'FBI shooting range' is one of three movie scenarios. The IR gun has a funny trigger that may not "shoot" when pulled. The computer crime area was tiny, which is too bad b/c there's a lot that could have been done.

The "Cop Shop" gift shop has tourist junk (keychains, mugs, etc) and tshirts. There were some really inappropriate pink tanktops for little girls that said: "I get arrested for the search" and one with handcuffs that says "Control freak". Umm...yeah.

So, I wont be going back anytime soon.