Kansas City is a travel gem, an underestimated Midwest magnet of a city that’s classy, cultured and especially accommodating when it comes to kids.
Here are some examples of just how accommodating:
Crown Center is home of Kaleidoscope, a free, first-come, first-served place where you can create your own 40-minute family arts sessions. Kids and parents work their imaginations to create art with material left over from hometown Hallmark Cards’ manufacturing process. The results are amazing: The keepsakes are the kind of thing you want to hang on your office wall, then stash away in that special place family memorabilia goes to age gracefully.
Wonderscope Children’s Museum of Kansas City is actually out in suburban Shawnee. The exhibits are precisely that: wondrous. Everybody eats, and the exhibit Farm to Market shows kids where the food comes from. They can collect eggs from a chicken coop, feed a calf, hoist hay bales up a kid-powered conveyor and do some gardening. Cues them in real quick that food doesn’t come shrink-wrapped and ready-made from the grocery store. Kids love animals, and Ready, Vet Go is an exhibit that shows them how to care of those critters. They dress up like veterinarians, put on a stethoscope and use X-rays to diagnose ills. H2Oh! Is exactly what you think it is: an interactive area in the museum that lets kids splash around, play with boats and ducks and construct a flowing pipe structure.
Speaking of animals, start your child’s visit to the Kansas City Zoo with the show SOAR: A Symphony In Flight. The 20-minute production connects kids to the world of bird flight. There’s a conservation message embedded in all of this, one that your child can take away and act on someday. After SOAR, take them to see the new tiger habitat. These beautiful animals will get to hang out in an area five-fold larger than the one they’re vacating. Something called Invisa-net is the barrier between beast and human here. It allows you take better pictures the animals than before.
In terms of travel, Kansas City remains a bargain, and that bargain starts out at the airport where Southwest Airlines is the prime player.
(Image: Mike Willis)
