{"id":7024,"date":"2018-12-31T04:55:32","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T04:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/?p=7024"},"modified":"2023-07-12T17:11:29","modified_gmt":"2023-07-12T17:11:29","slug":"uss-midway-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/misc\/uss-midway-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"USS Midway Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"USS<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Initially I didn’t plan on visiting the USS Midway Museum<\/a> as it sits right in the most touristy part of San Diego, next to the cruise ship terminals. But glowing reviews online made me figure it was worth a visit, especially considering I wanted to see the Maritime Museum which is just down the street. Besides, the museum itself is an aircraft carrier — not a place most of us civilians would get to see up close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I bought a ticket and headed over. I decided to walk since I needed to burn off all those calories from the Tijuana street food tour yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s easy enough to find the USS Midway Museum, but on my walk over I noticed something that made my heart stop for a second: an enormous cruise ship — taller than the Midway<\/a> herself — was docked right next door. That meant thousands of potential more tourists to compete with!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worse as I soon found out the USS Midway Museum doesn’t handle crowds well. You have to wait in up to six lines to get in: bag check, ticket check, mandatory photo, plus one if you drove and want to park there, plus one if you didn’t buy a ticket in advance, plus one if you want an audio guide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strangely none of these lines did much for crowd control, so once I got into the main area — the hangar deck — it was quite crowded and hard to move around. The hangar deck has a wide array of exhibits, but the main attraction seems to be some flight simulator rides. For the kids that’s probably fun, but not really what I came to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most interesting part by far is the flight deck up on top. Since the Midway was in service from 1945 through 1992 it’s seen a number of different types of aircraft, from propeller planes to helicopters to cargo aircraft to fighter jets — and they have one of everything. Some of them you can climb or walk into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the best part of the flight deck isn’t the airplanes, it’s the navy veteran tour guides explaining how it all worked. Some interesting things I learned:<\/p>\n\n\n\n