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Can You Have
Too Much Fun?
Nah!
A visit to Rochester’s Strong National Museum of Play
I have heard my children squeal with delight on the kiddie rides at the county fair. I have seen them drop everything and run, sprinting to the swings at the local playground. But this kind of playing—darting from place to place to place in a wild frenzy—I had never witnessed before.
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We were just five minutes into our day at the Strong Museum, and I watched in motionless disbelief as my kids were absorbed into a sea of happy children overwhelmed by the bounty of toys and games. With a quick sideways glance to my husband, I asked, “Is it possible for them to overdose on fun?”
We had driven from Buffalo to Rochester, an hour-long eternity for our eager children, who gleefully approached the entrance with leaps and bounds…literally. My 4-year-old daughter skipped ahead, singing a chorus of “Come on, hurry up!” and my 2-year-old son wiggled out of his stroller at first glimpse of the building’s larger-than-life toy blocks.
It was our first time visiting the museum, known among mommy circles as THE place to completely exhaust your kids for a quiet evening at home. All that my children knew was Mom and Dad and Grandma and Papa were taking them to a new place, and they were going to have some serious fun.
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Founded in 1968, the museum evolved from the lifelong passion of Margaret Woodbury Strong, a lover of games and collector of toys. Today, its most famous attractions are the kid-sized Wegmans and the adult-sized Sesame Street, but with a little imagination, visitors can also fly a helicopter, deliver the mail, collect eggs from a chicken, and broadcast the weather report from a TV news desk.
Around every corner in this 282,000-square-foot playplace is another twister or turner or stepper or climber—and those aren’t just the children. To call its displays “exhibits” doesn’t do them justice. No, a better description would be to call them hands-on, jump-on, try-on adventures.
The excitement was contagious, and I soon found myself testing my balance in the sideways room, looking out from a treehouse with my son, and putting on a magic show with my daughter. We all played dress-up—even Papa donned a Batman cape to walk across the “high wires” over Gotham City.
After our long day of play, we loaded our still-excited kids into our minivan. “Surely they’ll sleep on the way home,” I quietly whispered to my husband, hoping that the mommy circle legend was right. No such luck! This day of fun lasted well past their bedtime, even after I promised we would go back soon.
Photos courtesy Strong National Museum of Play®, Rochester, New York.