SAMSAT AREA 21 — Attraction in San Antonio

This place is on an old Army base so the streets are not in a grid pattern, plus it looked deserted and closed. The museum is small and FREE, but they ask for donations and it's worth giving something because the service was great! Staff were super friendly, the front desk staff chatted with us and made us feel welcome. Someone else offered us a tour around the place, which was cool. They have Tesla coils but apparently the person who runs the show was out :( We were told when the show is on, people get to see electricity and hold some poles to be a human conductor! The guide said you can feel the vibration in your whole body - definitely coming back for that show! You get to see changes in technology (phones and comupters) over time, so the kids learn something. They have a weird noise machine or musical instrument that I've seen in a Star Trek episode (I'm not joking) and the virtual reality sandbox was very cool - build mountains, make it rain or snow by making shadows with your hands, build lakes and rivers, see the elevations - interactive and fun for kids.

Quick warning for parents with noise sensitive kiddos - the Tesla coils gets loud (according to the guide), lots of loud pops and bangs. The weird instrument is also loud and the high pitched sounds can get annoying - they're in the same room. The sandbox is on the other side of the building, different room, so at least there's a way to escape the noise. Also, they are moving to new digs nearby in...

Free and in air conditioning, I can't complain too much. A lot of stuff required staff to manually come and do, but thankfully the staff was helpful with coming to each thing. A lot of stuff is very clearly put together by interns and college students projects but it made for a fine time waster while cooling off from the Texas heat.

The whole place is a very weird combination of a bunch of military industrial complex sponsors, combined with its emptiness when I visited it was a very surreal experience. I think the average American couldn't care less about this but figure it's worth giving a heads up to anyone uncomfortable with that. The whole area is a defense contractor hub so this should be no surprise to locals but to visitors it might be...

3 stars because it's free and they have some cool stuff, but most of the activities were unavailable because they have to be operated by a staff member and they were apparently all on vacation today. There were just some interns running the place. It kinda seems like it's set up specially for school field trips as opposed to families. Topographic sand, cyber security computers, plus one flight simulator on the Boeing side were the only activities. There were some interesting items and informational signs but we would have liked to see more of the tech gadgets in action. Maybe we'll go back to give it another...