The Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta, Georgia, was one of the stops on our little mini-vacation around my son’s birthday. It’s part of the CityPASS network, so we basically got in for free by this point. My son is a gigantic fan of dinosaurs. He is the dinosaur kid, more than any other kid in his preschool class, so I knew this would be right up his alley.

The museum is actually beautiful and reminds me of a very upscale museum. There are technically three floors, but it’s not exactly a gigantic place. There’s just a lot of open space in the middle. The way they designed it is pretty cool, though. The museum staff are very helpful and friendly, and they do a pretty good job of teaching kids about fossils and dinosaurs.

There’s technically more to this museum than dinosaurs, but dinosaurs are the main theme, taking up probably, I don’t know, 90% of the exhibits. Some of the skeletons they have on display are absolutely impressive. To be perfectly honest, they’re probably the best I’ve ever seen. The ones I remember seeing as a child are kind of hazy.

We also got the opportunity to watch one free, short-ish movie while we were there. The choices were between a dinosaur T. rex movie and a movie about horses. I knew there was no way we weren’t going to watch the dinosaur movie, so that’s what we chose. Ironically, though, they showed a trailer for the horse movie, and it actually seemed pretty interesting. This was also the first time Alex got to experience a movie theater, even though it wasn’t a traditional commercial one. He honestly did pretty well, but he’s potty training right now, and of course he had to use the bathroom during the best part.

It’s a wonderful museum, and I’m really glad we got a chance to see it. At the end, you get to visit the gift shop. It was really hard to keep him out of there because I always try to save those things for the end of a visit instead of the beginning. It’s definitely the perfect place to get a gift for any kid you know who likes dinosaurs. He ended up picking out a brontosaurus from the toy rack as his gift of the day.