SPY Exhibit at Discovery Times Square

As a mom, I'm not only looking for fun activities to do with the kids but also fun things that my husband and I would enjoy as well, especially on Father's Day.

This Father's Day we decided to visit the SPY Exhibit at Discovery Times Square which is about 30 minutes from our house. It's the next best thing to visiting the Spy Museum in Washington DC, which is five hours from us.

Since my kids are enamored with spy gear and the Spy Kids movies they were excited to hear that we were taking a trip to a Spy Interactive Exhibit. Well this isn't like the movies. This is the "Real Deal", a sneak peak into the real world of espionage. They were about to embark on a mission with factual, informative, and dramatic stories to learn about the secret world of espionage.

Collecting Information or intelligence about potentially hostile countries and groups can identify threats against the US before harm occurs. The only way to uncover our enemies' secrets is to put United States intelligence officers on daring missions on land, under sea and miles above our world. We experienced first-hand techniques that spies used, such as voice changers and virtual disguise, and saw actual gadgets revealed for the first time ever. There were spy cameras strapped to pigeons and an umbrella that shoots poison pellets and was actually used in an assassination.

There were a couple of stations where the kids could have disguised pictures of themselves on a touch screen by adding various hats, glasses, wigs or facial hair but they couldn't reach it by themselves (step stools would have been beneficial) but that didn't deter us from having fun.

The best part for our 5 and 8 year old kids was the Laser Maze that challenged you to navigate through a room filled with moving and crisscrossing laser beams in ten seconds without breaking a beam, going over and under as quickly as possible to reach the end of the maze. My kids went through the maze about a dozen times. The exhibit took us about an hour to complete and my children were very satisfied. This is a must see before it's gone. The Spy Exhibit is open until March 2013.

For more information, including hours and admission rates, check out the Discovery Times Square website.