On Friday, my family headed north for our weekend getaway on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. Because we still have a little guy, we planned on making a pitstop in Springfield, Massachusetts for The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum.

The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss and The Springfield Museums are under an hour and a half from Fairfield, so it would make a great day trip even if we hadn’t been headed further north. I can say this with certainty, because my older son and I made the trip for a craigslist purchase turned museum day a few years ago.

COVID-19 Precautions

If you, like me, have stayed on the side of caution since things have reopened, you may want me to cut to the chase: is it safe? How do I know? What coronavirus precautions are in place?

• Masks worn by all at all times in the building
• Scheduled reservations for your party
• Line up outside with six foot markings to check in for your online reservation
• Plexiglass in front of cashiers
• Limited amount of guests in gift shop, which is now a one way loop
• The Cat’s Corner (craft area) in The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum had trays with the materials for one of the craft per child, rather than having communal craft supplies on the table
• Cafe had been reformatted so that customers could order from a window outside and eat outside

More information about their health and safety precautions can be found on their site here: https://springfieldmuseums.org/health-and-safety/

If you want my opinion: yes, we felt very safe. We did have our own hand sanitizer, which was good because we didn’t see a lot of stations throughout. We weren’t looking for them, either, because we had our own. The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum is very interactive, but much of those exhibits had been taken apart to decrease need for staff to sanitize too many smaller items.

Usually, you may climb upon the sculptures outside, but those were blocked off.

The main reason we felt very safe is because much of the time it was only us! We’d see other guests from a distance, but the most we saw other parties (2) was when we were lining up early for our reservations, which we made for their first slot upon opening at 10 am. We figured that’d be the cleanest, safest time of day.

The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum

This museum is just the cutest. We have a pretty extensive collection of Seuss books that we read before nap time and The Grinch was my youngest’s first favorite movie, so I thought he’d appreciate it.

In the end, I underestimated it. He LOVED the museum and didn’t want to leave!

This bakery area has a pretend kitchen in which the kids usually have play food to play and interact with. There was not any play food now per CDC recommendations.

They did some renovations since the last time we visited. Last time, there wasn’t much of anything Grinch related aside from the sculpture in the garden outside. Now they have a little Grinch room with two or three interactive exhibits, but for COVID sake, both were not in use.

You can see in the background of this picture from 2017 what the room used to look like.

Another big change that they made since our visit in 2017 was that they completely renovated the basement for an “Cat’s Corner” craft room, more places for books, and a hall of mirrors. We were busy crafting down there, but my youngest and I were both equally entranced by this hand blown glass Seuss fauxquarium.

We really loved having the museum to ourselves. Here are some more pics from the very interactive first floor.

The second floor is more for the adults than the kids. Much of the exhibits upstairs are about Theodor Seuss “Ted” Geisel’s life, his artwork outside of what hes’s known for in the books, and his correspondence with his nephew and namesake, Theodor B. Owens.

There are also two rooms that are replicas of the homes he lived in during later life, one of which was his den–it has many items he collected over his travels and is pretty groovy if you ask me.

The other room was a mock up of his studio.

These spaces were very inspiring for me as a writer and amateur artist.

I’ll share more about the other Springfield Museums in another post. Subscribe to receive a notification about my next posts!