Tinkertown

Tinkertown,what can we say about Tinkertown. Super fantastic awesome ass kicking!

If you are in Winnipeg, it is summer, your kids are young (ages 2 to 14), and you like amusement parks then Tinkertown is the place for you all.

After a long day at Tinkertown we were all a little tired.

The rides are all for young kids. A small roller coaster, to a tiny pirate ship. The cost is quite reasonable and we easily spent a whole day going from ride to ride, and then back again to each ride, over and over again. The food is what you would expect, hot dogs and fries, cotton candy and pop. So make sure to bring water and other food if you don’t want deep-fried sugar.

Olde time cars are fun!

Chair swings are her favorite ride.

It is a few minutes out of Winnipeg but well worth the short drive.

Museum and Planetarium

Now you say “Museum” and I say “Cool, I’ll get some pants on.”, but you say “Museum and Planetarium” and I will scream “Quick fuel up the rocket it opens in 3 minutes!”

A good museum has to be one of my favorite places to take the kids. The good ones have interactive exhibits, cool scenes displayed, and lots of variety not just endless displays of dead animals. The Manitoba Museum is actually comprised of the Museum, the Planetarium and the Science Gallery.

A little snack after the museum and before the planetarium.

There are a few snack machines in the entry of the museum as well and a decent little gift shop. The cost is a little high so you might want to buy the full family package to the Museum, Planetarium, and Science Gallery.

Museum

We will start with the museum.

We went as a whole 5 person family to the museum this Easter 2012. We have been before but hte kids wanted ot go again, and I quote “I want ot see the ship again!”

The museum is very good in some places, like the Boreal Forrest Gallery and the ship the Nonsuch, but lacks pizzazz in areas like the Earth History Gallery.

The mighty Nonsuch is amazing to get to walk around on!

The end of the museum you walk through the Urban Gallery which is great fun for the kids. the content is a bit over the heads of the younger crown but there is still lots for them to learn about by walking around in a 1920s town.  It is fun to ask “remember where you get your hair cut?” then show them the old barber shop.

The museum is decent and would recommend it for families, but only if you like museums. If you don’t this one will not likely win you over to te museum fan club.

BUT being able to walk on the Nonsuch and see what it would look like docked in a harbour might be worth the risk.

Planetarium

The Planetarium at the Winnipeg Museum is awesome. Well i thought so, the two older kids (4 and 6 at the time) were not so enthralled.

We bought tickets for the summer shy show that was 35 minutes long. We ended up leaving after 20 minutes. sigh!

The planetarium is nice with comfortable seats and quality lights an equipment. But of course it gets dark during the show so younger kids may not love looking at the constellations as much as I did. Oh well, we will have to try again in a decade or so.

I had enough fun for all of us!

Leo Mol Sculpture Garden

We took the family to Assiniboine park in 2011 in early summer, and it was actually by accident.

We had planned on spending the afternoon at the zoo in Winnipeg, which I find out later is actually called the Assiniboine Park Zoo. On the drive to the park we drive by this fantastic looking gated park/garden/sculpture place.   THe both of us looked at each other and were immediately excited about taking a look at the place. ONce we were done pulling a wagon full of tired and hot kids around the zoo our excited had faced a whole lot. But we thought we would give it a try.

Now what we had found was one amazing huge garden(s), and the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden. The sculpture garden is inside the English garden but you just have to wander around and you will find them both.

Now it does seem strange to take these,

these boys don’t sit still for long, just like bees!

to this,

Assiniboine Gardens

But it worked, it worked so well!

They were tired and hot and were even kinda bored with ‘seeing’ animals at the zoo. But these gardens allow you to walk multiple paths, get close to the plants and flowers (no touchie!) and slowly walk around in the sun and shade and relax.  It allowed them to wander and be more free and investigative than the zoo.

We quickly split up with the young one teetering around at his own pace and random directions, while the older two were a bit more focused and suggestible as to things to look at or paths to take. We spend a good hour or so wandering around.

Water feature in the Leo Mol sculpture garden

Now the plants and flowers are amazing, we went early in the summer so the flowers were crazy cool, though i am sure later in the summer there would still be nice flowers to view. We would suggest this to families that like to have a little walk, enjoy to beautiful gardens and spend some time talking about some of the amazing flowers.

WORD OF CAUTION: this is not a picnic place or ball throwing kinda park (there are lots of those in the Assiniboine Park though). This place is a tranquil quiet place, and so may contain it’s fair share of khaki wearing-loafer donned-pearl necklaced-sun hat wearing-culture snobs (and there is nothing wrong with that). So you either have to enjoy other people getting annoyed by active kids (I do), or maybe keep away.

The whole Assiniboine Park was nice, great picnic places, room to run, zoo, but the gardens were a surprise that was excellent.

oooooh, sculpture in a garden.

Assiniboine Park Zoo (Winnipeg Zoo)

Ahh Zoos, how much fun I always imagine going you being. Walking from enclosure to enclosure having amazing life changing interactions with each and every wonderful animal………sigh! The monkeys looking directly at my oldest and just staring or the zebras in a show of synchronization galloping by my family as we watch them pass. Alas. 

Zoos to me are almost like a high school dance. They should be fun but you spend most of your time walking around never actually getting close to what you came to see. Now don’t get me wrong I still think they are fun and we always hit up the local zoos when we get into town, but they almost always don’t live up to the hype.

her shoulder is BARE!

The Assiniboine Park Zoo is a fun zoo with the usual cast of animals; Slender-tailed meerkats, European wisent, Domestic polecat (no comment), Black oystercatcher, Tawny frogmouths (only the one though), and my favorite the Splendid Mandarinfish.  But what we saw when we were there last summer 2011 was what will bring us back again, and soon hopefully! The brand new $200 million The International Polar Bear Conservation Centre. They were building it in 2011 so we missed out, but whoa boy! does it look cool!

What is for supper Mrs. Polar Bear?

The International Polar Bear Conservation Centre opened at Assiniboine Park Zoo on January 23, 2012, and it is a key component of the new Journey to Churchill exhibit currently under construction at the Zoo as part of its redevelopment plan. So the zoo is defiantly spending some money and it is going to be revitalizing the park for sure.

The facilities are very nice and the zoo is large so plan on at least a half day or more to soak it all in.

I love pushing 100 lbs.of kids around a hot zoo.

Just remember to bring lots o’ water and a few snacks, they have a great ‘food court’ there but of course the prices are like a movie theatre.

Nothing says zoo like wild Himalayan short haired pony rides.

Now after visiting the updated zoo my family will then want to go to Churchhill, Manitoba to see real polar bears. I always wanted to drive a giant monster truck bus.

Everyone in Churchhill drives one right?