Such a fun and unique experience for families visiting San Diego. The New Children’s Museum is incredibly interactive and thoughtfully designed, with installations that really encourage creativity, imagination, and hands-on play. It’s the kind of place where kids can fully explore and adults end up having just as much fun watching them discover everything.The staff were wonderful throughout our visit. Friendly, engaging, and clearly passionate about creating a welcoming environment for families. The whole Museum has such a positive and creative energy to it.Definitely worth a visit if you’re in San Diego with children. We’ll absolutely be back.

Coming from Oklahoma, this place is a parody of Southern Californians. The usual occupational costumes, hands-on buttons and wheels, and informative displays about our world of a typical children’s museum are not to be found. Instead it is an industrial building with play areas styled like modern art exhibits, complete with mini bios about the artist who created the area and explanations about the primitive, tactile nature of modeling clay and it’s effects on the child psyche. (I’m not kidding.)The visitor is bombarded with endless plaques and scribblings of pseudo-philosophical New Age doggerel ramblings about linking your spirit to the compassion of the cosmos and the like. Thankfully the museum areas are sized for children too young to read. (Attached to this review is a sample blurb complete with comical spelling error.)Several play areas are surprisingly nightmarish, especially for children used to Elmo. One enormous set of drawings on the first floor entitled “Y Mas Alla” consists of bizarre Picasso/Dali type figures such as a floating brain with a mouth.Likewise, the largest play areas is a series wooden play-houses filled with garish black and white line drawings and imaginary letters that vaguely resemble southwestern petroglyphs. Thankfully the aesthetic is so psychedelic that children seemed to look past it. I’m guessing they couldn’t tell it was as supposed to portray anything at all.The most normal area, and definitely the highlight of the museum, was an outdoor second floor veranda with hands-on modeling clay, stencils, and a chalk board.It was there we noticed an inviting, large public park playset across the street, and we promptly left the garish museum and the creepy blank stares of its docent stalkers to go play there.I will have to look up the strict definition of a “museum” because I am curious on what grounds this strange place might qualify as one. Maybe the children are considered postmodern exhibits. Whatever the case, it’s $20-$30 a head for any human 1 yr or older. In some ways it was worth the cost as train wrecks like this don’t come along often.

Just an expensive playground. Not a museum, and not worth the money! Not educational. Parking is $20! Everything about this place is overpriced. Adult admission is ridiculous.

This place is an anxiety ridden death trap. Absolutely not worth the$. It’s very abstract art based, and a lot of potentially dangerous situations for young kids. Especially the whole second floor. Good place for maybe kids 7/8 or older

Such a gem. This is an ideal museum for kids who enjoy exploring spaces and being creative. They have a beautiful macramé climbing structure, clay making activity and an art studio.