National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows — Attraction in Illinois

Well if you like sending your kid to a place that allows your kid to go home with someone else with out your knowledge and then show up to school for pick up and ask the principal where your kid is and the answer is " I dont know" then briskly walk past you, then feel free to. The school administration is as friendly and professional as a White Castle worker. And future dad's, don't even begin to think you will be involved with coaching your son/daughter in sports. Unless you went to school there of course, see the dad's who attended the school as youngsters now have kids there themselves, they think they run the place. Basicly outsiders beware, so my recommendation, if you grew up there probably great, if you like gossip among adults, great, like unprofessional people, great, like cold shoulders from other parents cause your not in that "click" of Alumni yourself, awesome. enjoy the train wreck. Highly disappointed ! If your looking for...

This is a deceptively big place. We ended up spending 3 hours here.

We first visited the visitor center; watched the movie on the background and got a map of where to go. I recommend doing this first.

We drove to the stations of the cross and got out and walked.. I recommend walking it; all stations have audio. Was very peaceful; and got me feeling more serene. We did go then to the main shrine; at the bottom of the hill with many seats. We visited the chapel around the back; which is very well maintained. Directly across from the Main Shrine is The Millennium Spire - which was built to commemorate the Third Millennium. It stands at 85' tall and is made of stainless steel. Then we went to an area with bells and a pond.

Finally, we got back in the car and went to The Lourdes Grotto. The Grotto is actually very near the entrance, but we saved it for the end of the visit.

Things were extremely quiet and peaceful on the...

I’ve been going here since I was a kid in the 80’s and I’ve continued the tradition with my kids and now with my grandkids. This year we went as usual and it took an hour to get in and over an hour to get through because it’s a cluster fluck of cars all crammed together stopping and going the whole time because they have 2 lanes of cars trying to go through at once instead of single file like it’s always been and you just sit there stuck in a traffic jam and can’t get anywhere or enjoy the lights because of it and the kids were crying they wanted to go home after about 30 minutes of mostly sitting there and barely moving but we couldn’t leave because we were trapped in there forever and I’m never going back until I see on the reviews that it’s back to a single line of traffic. I would rather pay $30 to go to the race track lights or Santa’s magical kingdom. Never ever again will I...