The USS Midway, America's longest serving aircraft carrier is now a permanent museum based in downtown San Diego.
Admission is $15 for adults and includes an audio tour option (you get a set of headphones to use). One can easily spend half the day touring various levels of the ship to see officer's quarters, medical facilities, numerous aircraft (both on and below deck), and other artifacts.
There's a gift shop and small café on board as well.
Posted by jzawodn at December 24, 2006 09:02 AM
Your post does not convey the TOTAL AWESOMENESS of the Midway museum!!! Although the audio tour is OK, it's really worthwhile to talk to the real live docents because they are almost all people who served on the Midway in the jobs they are now describing. One lady docent we met was the widow of the former two-time navigator! Even though her husband was dead, she was keeping his memory alive by telling people about him on the tour, and sharing stories that he'd told her. I loved touring the ship and the aircraft -- a lot of which are surprisingly odd-looking and smelly :-) -- but the docents really make the Midway museum extra special.
If you're in San Diego, check out the Air and Space Museum, too. My grandfather used to take me there once a year. Even as a kid, it was never boring.
Always love to see when folks publish about the USS Midway. Indeed she was a great warrior, and as a museum she is now a great educator.
Troutgirl, I cannot agree more about the Docents, these guys are great and love to share their knowledge and experience whether they served aboard Midway or one of the other carriers in our fleet. http://johncarmichaels.typepad.com/carmichaels_position/2006/04/the_best_uss_mi.html
And finally, Jeremy, it looks like you and I were bagged by the same meme ("5 things"). I did a quick cursory look to see who our "6 degrees of Keven Bacon" was our connect... but ADD kicked in.
-JC
Amazing, sounds great but have we thought how important is the safety in this touring process, we may not know who is the culprit within the innocents.
The midway tour is indeed excellent - I went during ETech 2006 (pictures: http://flickr.com/photos/bajames/tags/midway/). Totally agree about the Docents - the fellow who showed us around had served on the Midway and had an endless supply of amazing stories about the ship (and he didn't seem to mind when people kept asking him questions about things that happened in "Top Gun"...). If your tall (I'm 6'4") you need to watch your head a lot, especially when your in the lower decks - after about 3 hours of crouching over, my back started to hurt!
