Swiss Museum of Transport

Swiss museum of transport is a perfect place to visit with kids on a rainy day. One would want to say that it was because of our impeccable planning down to the last t but well in this case, it was sheer luck.
Switzerland gets a fair amount of rain in August and thus if your itinerary allows, keep your mountain peak visits like visit to Mt Titlis or Jungfraujoch for a clear day. Also, this is a very highly rated excursion on Tripadvisor, so I recommend visiting it on a weekday to avoid atleast the local crowd.

Reaching there and Parking
Since we had rented a car for our trip, we decided to drive to the Swiss Museum of Transport. There is ample free parking available next to the museum. Highly recommended to reach early to secure a spot closer the entrance to avoid walking in the rain. In case you are not driving, Switzerland is very well connected with public transport network and google maps should be useful in figuring out the best way to reach the Swiss Museum of Transport from wherever you are staying.
Check out this post for more details on self driving in Europe and this one for a kid friendly 7 day Switzerland Itinerary.

Opening hours
10am to 6pm. Best to start early and try being at the ticket counter before 10am to make the most of your visit to the Swiss Museum of Transport.

Tickets and reservations
Don’t need to buy tickets before hand. There are various options of tickets with different combos – only the museum entrance, + planetarium shows, +chocolate tour and one with everything included. Since we were interested in the shows and chocolate tour too, we took the Day Pass. You can see more about the tickets on the official website of Swiss Museum of Transport.
With Swiss pass you get discounts (CHF 40 for day pass for adults instead of CHF 56). We had opted for a Swiss travel card or Swiss half fare card instead and with that we don’t get any discounts on Swiss sightseeing except for mountain excursions and boating trips etc. You can see more details on Swiss pass and travel card here.

What to see and Do
Aviation and Space Travel: This section is next to the planetarium and media hall too and thus its better to do it in one go. There are certain shows, exhibits and rides which are a must do with any age group of children. We spent most of the time here and don’t worry if you spend close to 2-3 hours in this section alone as this has tons to see, learn and enjoy. The exhibits and rides I recommend would be:
Helicopter and Airplane simulator: There is a height restriction for being a pilot in both of these. While in the airplane simulator there was an option to be both a pilot and a passenger, in Helicopter it was just a pilot and hence both my kids couldn’t do it even with an adult.
Space transformer is another one you should totally do – it’s like how astronauts feel in space. Its an absolute must do. My 8yr old and 3yr old both had a fabulous time on this one and even we thoroughly enjoyed it.
There was a space information exhibit with lots of different statistics on relative sizes and gravity across different planets and moons, the mars rover, surface of moon and mars etc which the 8yr olds were fascinated with. Other than these, you also have an option to go inside Rega: a rescue helicopter, write your name in Morse code, a glider simulator, Jumping into airspace through Red Bull Stratos, correctly sorting the luggage in their destination which was a bit tough even for the 8yr olds and managing the air space through the Air Traffic Controller activity which was a hit with both age groups (8yr old and 3yr old).

Media hall: you can avoid depending on your interests as my kids aged 3 and 8 were out in 30mins. There are 10 activity stations, with 3 VR activities and some video making and editing stations. They tried their hand at a few of these and then lost interest.

Planetarium: There are shows at different times and pick the show your kids will be interested in. I recommend flying to the moon (it may be different when you visit). More importantly, check the schedule right in the beginning from the front desk or the planetarium entry so you can plan accordingly. Some shows and some parts of the shows are only in German and thus checking the schedule for the English ones is critical. The schedule for all shows, movies and chocolate tour is also present online so checking it before even entering the museum and planning in advance will be very useful and avoid wasting time from going back and forth between sections.

Swiss Chocolate Adventure: Fun and informative chocolate tour for children of all ages. Highlight for the kids was of course getting lots of Lindors in flavours of their choice. If your kids are fond of Lindors, they will surely love it.

Road and Railways Transport: There are a whole host of cars, bikes and motorized vehicles talking about history of road transportation be it 2 wheeler or 4 wheeler. This was more geeky and our kids were out in 30minutes again but after they had enjoyed looking at some vintage cars, some unique bicycles and flaunted sitting on a motorbike.

Ships and Water Transport: Parts of this was fun again, knowing about different kinds of boats, ships and submarines; doing rowing as an activity and a race, posing in one of the boats, looking at different kinds of engines, tracing of history from sail boats to steam powered boats and beyond.

Digital Arena: This had some fun activities on sorting and searching, process planning and controlling, programming and learning basics of algorithms. Basically without explicitly mentioning, the kids learnt how a computer works at the back-end and how problems in computer science are solved.

Central Arena: During summer months and sunny days, scooters and play buses are provided for crossing the large Arena. The museum’s garden has go karts on which 3 to 12-year-olds can learn the rules of the road. The roadworks arena is where the children can use excavators and bulldozers to load and transport various construction materials, mend roads and lay paths.

There is easily enough to keep the kids busy for 8hrs and in fact you may have to actually pick and choose activities and shows in certain cases as doing everything may not be possible.