We went to the Springs Preserve for their Halloween Harvest ($9 per person). Overall, the Preserve itself seemed very nice.

Unfortunately, we got to see very little of it because we had to stand in line for 80 minutes straight waiting to get on the Spooky Hay Ride ($7 per person). We purchased our tickets for seven o'clock and went to go line up at a quarter to seven just in case. When we got in line there was a sign that said our wait was approximately 40 minutes from our point. The line moved incredibly slow, and we didn't get to get on the ride until a little after eight o'clock. My feet were hurting terribly, and there was no way to leave the line to go to the bathroom. They were taking people in groups of twenty every fifteen minutes, and I think that the intelligent thing to do would have been to have sold the tickets in groups of twenty at fifteen minute intervals. No one came out to apologize to us. The Hay ride itself was fun, and the guide "Lefty" really did a great job... but I regretted making my whole family stand in line for an hour and a half to ride it because it was only fifteen minutes long.

We finished the night eating at the Wolfgang Puck Cafe because we thought it would be a good ending to the night. The price came to about $40 for two people (one entree per person and one bottle of juice per person) and it was far too expensive for the tiny amount of food we were given. The food itself was far below mediocre, and the pasta salad was just pasta smothered with an obscene amount of mayonnaise. I would recommend skipping Puck's and going to Panera Bread, where you can get the same thing but it actually tastes good.

I brought my second grade class to the Springs Preserve and had a wonderful guided tour by AJ and Catherine. The children learned so much and had so much fun at the same time! I would highly recommend this field trip to anyone! Plus if you call to reserve a fieldtrip through your school.. it's free as a teacher! The children would not stop talking about this field trip for weeks and have told me that my next years class should come and that they hope they are able to come next year! Kudos to the Springs Preserve and what they teach children and also kudos to the Education Team, keep up the good work and I will see you this upcoming school year with a new group of students!

During our 4-day Las Vegas trip at the end of June, my husband and I took the easy drive from the Strip to visit this place and were delighted with everything but the heat outside (duh!). One brilliant touch: The parking lot is completely covered with solar panels so 1) your car doesn't get hot and 2) power is generated for all the interactive exhibits in the museum (which means they "walk their talk") and then some. I was most interested to see the xeriscape demonstration gardens--gorgeous and blooming--and ran into an excellent docent named Pete, who gave us a complete tour. Lunch at the Wolfgang Puck cafe was quite good. We didn't get to see everything, but still learned a lot about the geology, history and settlement of Las Vegas. We recommend this highly!

This new museum is a 5-10 min drive from the Strip, and it's worth a visit. It's a tad on the expensive side (we paid about $18 per ticket), but you can easily spend half a day there. Lots of interactive games, educational kiosks, etc. Will appeal more to kids, with lots of good lessons in water conservation. Good movie has info on Las Vegas area stretching several million years back. Stop by the Wolfgang Puck cafe for a nice lunch.