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Overall - While this brand new museum was clearly a first class effort - I found nothing at all to recommend about it.

We recently decided to revisit Tryon Palace in New Bern, the re-constructed capitol building of colonial North Carolina. We had been to Tryon Palace years ago but thought it would be a nice day-trip from Raleigh for our 8-year old daughter to learn some N.C. history. Adjacent to Tryon Palace is a brand new history center (opened about 1-2 months before we got there). The new museum consists of two parts, a regional history center (conventional museum) and a kid-focused time-travel exhibit in the Pepsi Family Center. (Pepsi was invented at a drug store a few blocks from Tryon Palace - so Pepsi is a big sponsor for things in New Bern.)

Part 1: Pepsi Center time travel exhibit

The time travel exhibit was a hands-on 1835 village that consisted of a half dozen exhibits (a ship, a print shop, a kitchen, a quilting room, & a turpentine plant) We thought that our 8-year-old girl would have fun in the mini-village - BUT IT WAS A TECHNOLOGY BUST!!!

To participate in the village you have to "scan in" your ID card many times at each workstation at each exhibit. The exhibits require a specific number of people to activate them and everything is timed. So there is a lot of waiting until the previous group is done and then waiting until your group has the right number of people. In the kitchen exhibit, you had to follow detailed directions to make the recipe, and the video program would not advance unless you did everything perfectly. We wasted 10 minutes trying to find the right ingredients (many of which are unlabelled). Most of the workstations did not work and we spent an hour trying to comprehend the complicated process. The staff was very helpful but the mini-village was a fiasco. AVOID AT ALL COSTS UNTIL THEY GET THE BUGS SORTED OUT!!!

Part 2: Regional history museum

This was a dud too- though not as bad as the mini-village. The exhibits require a tremendous amount of reading - or listening to detailed recordings. There is almost nothing that is interesting enough to simply look at. You must read all of the text descriptions or listen to recordings.

Overall - I can't see this place appealing to kids or to serious history buffs.