You mean that sweatshirt cost US$50?
by Kidnykid - Written: Jun 18 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Ideal museum all-around for Baby Boomers
Cons: Some items in the gift shop were overpriced, museum is smallish
The Bottom Line: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is great for rock fans; others might be easily bored, and top floors especially are Lilliputian.
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| Kidnykid's Full Review: Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum |
Summer is the ideal time to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as you will likely not feel rushed out of the museum. It's open until 9 PM, while it closes at 5:30 PM Eastern time during the winter (when there are presumably fewer people coming to Cleveland).
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum advertises itself as containing elements of the "soundtrack of your life." That's because its explicit target market - Baby Boomers and those younger - are, at their oldest, well into middle age, a fact which apparently led the designers of this building to take special care to adapt it for the handicapped. (I have mild tendinitis in one area of the right leg, and had ample opportunity to use the Hall of Fame's elevator to save wear and tear on that leg.)
You enter the Hall of Fame through front doors which, if one is in a wheelchair and accompanied by someone else, are very well-placed for handicapped people. Tickets - which cost $18 for a one-day visit, just over $20 for a two-day pass, and are available through local Ticketmaster outlets if you live some distance away and want to stay at a Cleveland hotel - are purchased at the information desk. Then, visitors are expected to go downstairs to the exhibition hall to have their tickets torn, and to receive a wristband for free access to the whole of the Museum.
It is at this point that I feel the Museum is poorly designed; this way of assuring that guests have purchased tickets seems to me to be counterintuitive. One would think that wristbands would be given out near the information desk, as they might be at a movie theater or sporting event. One would also think that the ticket-taker would be there as well, if only for security purposes. How do the Hall of Fame staffers know that people on the upper floors have bought tickets? It's too easy to hop the escalator to the second floor without having first bought a ticket and/or obtained a wristband.
It is also almost impossible to know where the actual Hall of Fame is. The part that's marked Hall of Fame is actually a multimedia presentation, closed off while said presentation is being shown. You can't just decide to wander around and view the plaques. You have to stay outside in designated areas until you're told to go into the theater - a separate one from the theaters down the way where rock and roll movies are being shown.
I found myself disappointed in the Museum portion's relatively small size. I had planned our visit to the Hall of Fame and Museum with the assumption in mind that the building itself was about the same size as Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, with that museum's enormous amount of floor space devoted to exhibits and equally-prime lakeshore location (the lake in question being Michigan rather than Erie). Instead, only one portion of the museum - the basement exhibition hall near where visitors get their wristbands - has enough of the Museum's collection in it to make it worth one's while to spend a significant amount of time in it. In fact, there are so many costumes in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum collection that staffers have to rotate them regularly. There isn't enough room in the section devoted to costumes to allow the staff to show the Museum's entire costume collection.
The top three floors of the Museum are disappointingly minuscule - in fact, they're Lilliputian in size. We visited on June 14, 2003, for the U2 Fan Celebration. These three floors contained the featured exhibit, all things U2. There was no room to put anything else other than the exhibit and those who wanted to view the exhibit. As fascinating as the exhibit was, the top three floors could have used another few thousand square feet to do any rotating exhibit put there justice. Vendors of U2 memorabilia, as well as the @U2.com and U2mart.com staffers attending the day's events, had to be placed in other areas of the Museum.
I rated this a "shoestring" venue because you can indeed get away with spending less than $50 if you avoid the gift shop. If you love rock, you are better off buying the two-day pass, and coming during the summer when the Hall of Fame and Museum is open later all week (rather than just on Wednesdays as is the norm during the winter).
I'd recommend avoiding the gift shop entirely unless you really wish to purchase good classic rock. Sweatshirts - which can come in handy if you choose to go during the winter (remembering that your are literally on top of Lake Erie) - cost about $50 if you buy them there, and hoodies are just slightly more. These are the most expensive common items, and you can also run up into serious change if you buy memorabilia at the gift shop; there is a whole case full of the stuff at this gift shop, as one would expect at a museum like this.
I've rated the entire museum "average" because it is of interest primarily to rock fans in particular and musicians in general. (The only reason we were there is because our daughter is a die-hard U2 fan.) If all you want to do is enjoy the music, skip the museum and see if you can get some of the inductees' albums at a local music shop.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Friends
Best Time to Travel Here: Jun - Aug
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