Louisiana Children's Museum — Attraction in New Orleans

We were turned away at the door because I didn’t make reservations to use our membership in advance. I don’t remember needing reservations in the past. It was 10:30-11am on a Saturday, not even the museum’s peak hours according to their Google overview. Honestly, I had planned to get to the museum sooner, but.. kids.. and additional parking 8-10min walk away was hard to find. Front desk was chaotic. Had to wait 15 minutes at the desk. Most of the wait was a large group of 4-5 adults with a couple kids purchasing tickets and getting wristbands and another group of two adults with 2-3 kids renewing or trying to look up their membership on the other side of the front desk. It would be nice if they had a membership check in desk for current members and clearly marked check in lines. If there were signs I missed them. I thought we were next, but we were skipped amongst the chaos by a lady behind me. Remembered the front desk being chaotic last time we came too, but at least we had previously got in without as much hassle, a new membership purchased that day online and no reservations. This time I was told we would have to wait for over an hour because we didn’t have reservations. Ridiculous to have to wait over an hour in the damp cold with two anxious children when I paid over $200 for a membership. Some special consideration would be nice. I would’ve made reservations had I known. It was too cold to feed turtles or explore the park, not to mention we had other plans in an hour, so we just left. When we got home, I had to search for where it says to make reservations on their website. If the museum requires reservations, they should have it in big letters on the first page of their website. Or maybe some sort of door person asking if people have reservations with a QR code at the door to speed things up close to peak hours and a wristband person for people who already had reservations. I would’ve lost that 15-20min of my reservation either way if the desk and parking stays as is, so not recommended if you’re on a tight schedule. My kids were really bummed and I was too. What a waste of time. We have to go at some point to make paying for our membership worth it (we’ve only successfully gone once), but I won’t be renewing if they don’t fix these front desk line, parking, and...

We were excited to visit the Louisiana Children’s Museum using our ASTC/ACM reciprocal membership, but unfortunately, we were denied entry—despite meeting the requirements. The front desk staff remained polite, but wouldn’t even make eye contact. When we asked for clarification, the manager reiterated that our ID address had to match the address on our membership card—which is confusing, since membership cards typically don’t even list personal addresses, just names (hence the need to show ID).

We were told this was due to new ASTC rules as of May 1st, 2025. However, we’ve verified directly with ASTC and our home museum (where we purchased a travel membership) that no such rule exists. As long as you live and are visiting a museum 90+ miles from your home museum and residence, you’re eligible. This museum’s enforcement of arbitrary and incorrect rules seems to be a pattern, based on other reviews.

When we tried escalating to someone higher up, we were transferred right back to the same manager, who then changed the story—saying our home museum set the restriction (which also wasn’t true, as confirmed by their executive office). It just felt like an effort to justify turning us away for no valid reason.

Our 6-year-old was sad and confused why we weren’t allowed in.

TLDR: We were turned away despite having a valid ASTC membership and meeting the distance requirements. Staff cited a policy that we confirmed doesn’t exist. We hope the museum takes steps to clarify and properly implement reciprocal benefits, so future families aren’t similarly...

I was pretty disappointed in the children’s museum. We visited on a Sunday, very excited to see what all had changed since we were younger and brought our one year old for his first visit. The building is huge but the exhibits seemed small. We did see a lot of kids that enjoyed it while there, but they were much older. This may be a good place to bring your 3-8 year old, but under or over that age they probably won’t have much interest in it. A lot of the exhibits were just large groups of toys. The only thing really interactive/educational is the water tables and the music room. Especially if your child is shy or gets overwhelmed easily I would not recommend going here. It was very chaotic trying to walk through to get to each one. They did have one room specifically for babies 2 or 3 and under. All of the babies in that room enjoyed themselves and there was a lot of soft things for them to play with and explore in a safe environment without the fear of getting stepped on. Our little one did enjoy that room somewhat, but it’s not worth the price of admission for that one room in my opinion. I was also pretty surprised that the bathroom by the front entrance did not have a changing table in it. It’s possible I overlooked it, but I checked the largest stall and all down the wall past the sink and did not see one. I’m not sure about the other bathrooms, we just went to that one on our way out to try and change him before leaving assuming it would have one. This was just not the place for us and I do not see us returning when our...