Day 11-Arizona Science Center

Our Arizona Science Center membership expired last week. Lucky for us, we bought a voucher for a new membership on Groupon a couple months back, so we went to redeem it today. You can read my review about the Arizona Science Center here.

Busy, loud places drive me crazy! If we come to the science center on a busy day, I've got a headache and am ready to leave after an hour. When we go out, I like to be gone for a while, so I need to avoid the crowds and save my sanity.

How to Avoid the Crowds

• Go in the Afternoon. Most school and day care groups do their outings in the mornings. Most people that came earlier in the day have left to have lunch. You also lose the families with napping children in the afternoons. And those moms who didn't plan ahead and put a meal in the crock pot need to get home to get started on dinner.
• Call Ahead to Check for Scheduled Field Trips. Some days museums get slammed with field trips. I hate being places with field trip groups because the kids are less supervised and way more rowdy. If you call ahead, you can save yourself from going at the same time as 5 school groups.
• Avoid Holidays and Weekends. Yep. People like to do stuff these day.
• Avoid Free and Discount Days. I love a good freebie, and so does everyone else. If you want to go on a free/discounted day you will have to deal with the masses. But if you have a membership or if the crowds aren't worth it, you'll still want to know when these discount days are so you can avoid them. I prefer to make my own discounts using coupons and groupons.
• If you have planning a short visit, you could get there right at opening time. Usually places don't start to get busy for about an hour after they open, but this isn't always true.

So what I guess I'm basically saying is go when no one else wants to be there :)

How do you feel about crowded attractions and what lengths do you go to to avoid them?