The Mini-Time Machine (A Tucson Review)

If you live in Tucson, maybe you've heard about the Mini-Time Machine Museum of Miniatures. My husband and I, with our 2 year old son in tow, decided to check it out a few weeks ago. After all, a place that describes itself as, "a miniature time machine, by which the visitor sets off on a self-guided tour through different lands and times both real and imagined" is hard to resist, no?

After paying the $14 entry fee for both me and my husband ($7 each), we were off to the first of three rooms which was called, The Enchanted Realm. This room was pretty impressive; dimly lit with sparkly, magical lights and a gigantic fabricated tree right in the middle of the room. The tree was by far the best feature of the entire museum. It was built for little tykes to crawl around on and is spotted with tiny viewing windows wherein you can spy on a little mouse family that lives inside. Behind each window is a quaintly decorated room where little fake mice are going about their business, so cute.

Our son Elliot immediately zoned in on this darkened hole where a little holographic fairy lived. She would hover in the darkness for 30 seconds or so and then disappear, on to return about 2 minutes later. We must've stodd there for twenty five minutes just watching and waiting for the fairy to appear and disappear.

In the meantime my husband and I took turns examining the rest of the rooms, as Elliot count not be torn away from the Enchanted Realm. The museum definitely has an interesting collection of intricately and charmingly decorated little houses. After closely examining 5 or 6 of them however, I was bored.

Elliot didn't want to see anything but the tree and the fairy and all-in-all our visit lasted about 30 minutes, not quite worth the $14 to get in.

Not to mention that by that time I was nauseated by the amount of old lady perfume that was permeating every room of that place. Seriously, old ladies galore.

Highlight: Magical tree with mice and fairy

Planning a return trip: No

Appeal: Unless you're an 80 year old woman, pretty minimal

Overall rating: YYY (3 out of 6 hearts)

-Megan