Warbird Information Exchange

The problem is that the shuttle bus from the NASM that they used to have was nearly perfect, yet nobody used it. See the Washington Post article I linked at the top of this thread. Something like 50 people per day used it out of the 16,000 daily visitors to the NASM on the mall. I rode the thing when they still had it, and it was terrific. But they were losing $40-50K/month on the thing. I can't blame them for shutting it down. I think the real issue may be that even if you are practically chauffeured there, tourists don't want to spend the half-day that it takes to get way out to the sticks, see it, and get back. Or at least the present marketing does not induce them to do so.

August

Yeah, I rode it to, and it was cool.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

Last year, my son and I stayed right next to the "other" airport by our capitol. It seemed to take forever to drive to and from the Udvar Hazy museum. The main way around the DC area is the Metro. A Metro stop at Dulles and a short bus ride (or Metro stop!!!!!) to the museum would have been a welcome relief. Not to mention every road seemed to either have a constructon project or a major traffic jam.

Even he (a 16 1/2 year old) liked both Museums, especially the space exhibits and the simulated ATC at Udar Hazy.

Kenn

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May all your bent wings be F2G Corsairs!

Yes, decent public transit to Dulles would solve the problem of getting to U-H as well as a lot of other problems. But there seems to be something un-American about having decent public transit to major airports.

August

Allrightythen...seems like I just wrote a bit of this on another thread

I was asked by a friend if I would drive to DC this past weekend for the Cherry Blossom Fesitval. I told my friend that I would on the condition that she did not mind going down to the NASM with me I won as I got down there at 7:30am and parked my car right next to the facility...all day for free..WOOHOO! I agree with what a lot of you are saying in that the displays inside are getting a bit long in the tooth and really could use a dusting! LOVE the Jenny in all her unrestored glory My friend was a bit miffed at why they had the area with the Wright flyer closed off as she actually wanted to see that. She also asked me why there was the Italian aircraft hanging in the WWII gallery Also had the distinct displeasure of witnessing a couple of teenagers knocking their knuckles on the side of Flak Bait I asked the one why he did that and he told me that he did not think it was real When I tried to explain the significance of Flak Bait he got this glazed-over look on his face and I knew that he just did not get it. Should have just gone ahead and smashed his hand with my heel like I wanted to!

If ya do a little searching around on the net, it is really very simple to get out of downtown by the mall out to where Udvar-Hazy is. Google maps gave us the bestest step by step instructions! Plan the trip ahead and it is a breeze. For anyone who is aware of what Mr Udvar-Hazy has done in regards to the Dulles facility and then suggest that the name be changed? Rediculous, but in the name of progress, that may have to be done in order to get more people out there.

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Earn my respect and never lose it.
Demand my respect and never gain it. -Me

...just another plane dreamer.

Interesting that no one has questioned the validity of the attendance numbers, the 50% drop from 2003 to 2004 needs to be examined closely.

Before looking at solutions to perceived NASM problems the attendance numbers must be confirmed, and looked at in context of other DC museums, new museum openings, major exhibits, and compared to the ebb and flow of attendance numbers at other museums and gross DC museum attendance.

Tom-

Look at The Spirit Of St. Louis. The engine cowlings are gold...from varnish the museum put on decades ago to protect the flag paint (it needs to be removed). The plane desperately needs attention and they ignore it (one of their most historic). Now Spaceship One is jammed in next to it...it looks jammed in.
They have most of the Apollo EVA suits stored and refuse to display them. The curator of the suits has even made statements that as long as she is in control, most of the suits will never be on display. Imagine a darked hall of space suits in glass cases. How cool would that be!?! They won't do it even though they have plenty of room. Kids would love it. It's a great museum, but it needs some updating...

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"Everyone wants to live here (New Jersey), evidenced by the fact that it has the highest population per capita in the U.S..."

I think the numbers are valid... the museum has people that do nothing but count each person in the door... if you've been to any museum on the Mall you've seen that. Attendance numbers are very important to each museum...

I suspect you might have a suspicious nature... but there is no reason not to believe these numbers... unless of course you believe the earth is flat... the real issue is why the drop in attendance... especially in relation to the other Mall museums... there is something going on here... and the shear size of the number is not the issue...

gunny

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Scott 'Gunny' Perdue
www.scottperdue.com

I'm not a fan of how they have so many things hanging form the rafters. I'd like to be able to a get bit closer to these historic aircraft. Maybe include more dioramas. Perhaps if they made the downtown museum a concentration on space flight and then moved the aviation displays to UH. That way you are breaking up the collections more logically. It would also allow the A&S downtown to bring out more of their manned space flight collection.

1996 7 million
1997 ?
1998 10 million
1999 ?
2000 ?
2001 9.2 million
2002 ?
2003 9.4 million
2004 4.9 million
2005 6.1 million
2006 5 million
2007 6 million

Gunny-

While I too have observed the staff with the clickers counting each visitor and am not by nature suspicious one must question why there was a 48% drop from 03 to 04 followed by a 25% increase from 04 to 05, swings like that make me question the other attendance numbers as well. While it is possible that a new museum, or major exhibit opened, I suspect such wide apparent swings may be from the way visitors are tallied. Without comparing NASM numbers to the other museums on the mall we have no context. And without some way of verifying the accuracy of these numbers they could just as easily come from a phone book.

Tom-

In my opinion it is a waste of time worrying about the attendance numbers.... it is the relative numbers that are important...

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/sp ... ance_x.htm

as I said the real issue why the drop in 2004...

gunny

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Scott 'Gunny' Perdue
www.scottperdue.com

Gunny-

Relative numbers was exactly my point...................the sudden drop made the numbers questionable, without looking at the specifics I questioned "garbage in, garbage out". However the USA today article provided important context, both in relation to other museums that have seen similar drastic changes in attendance, and the Smithsonian in general. But more importantly the 100th Anniversary events in 2003 followed by construction that made the NASM appear closed. The issue of static exhibits is well recognized by all frequent visitors and is inevitable given the effort and scarce resources expended moving from Silver Hill to U-H.

Tom-

Allow me to step in here for a moment.

I've lived in the Washington DC area for almost 20 years now. I've been to the Mall Museum more times than I can count and I stopped counting how many times I'd been to Udvar-Hazy when I hit 150 about a year ago (I happen to live less than five miles from Dulles, so when the wife kicks the kids and me out of the house on Saturday mornings so she can clean, that's where I take them most of the time. They like getting Astronaut Ice Cream).

There are a large number of interrelated issues at work here, and I think neither the news articles nor the Booz study do a good job of explaining what seems to be happening.

1.) The mid/late 1990s and early 2000s saw a number of VERY popular exhibits at NASM that drove people into the museum. The Enola Gay exhibit, the Star Wars Magic of Myth exhibit and the Star Trek exhibit ... culminating in the 2003 Centennary of Flight events. Since then there hasn't been all that major of an exhibit ("Treasures of American History" is nice, with the American History Museum closed ... and as much as I like seeing Kermit, R2D2/C3PO, the Appomattox surrender chairs and Mr. Rogers sweater it isn't all that stirring, controversial or steeped in modern popular culture. Note that they do have the Seinfeld "Puffy Shirt" and Carrie Bradshaw's laptop from Sex in the City. Yawn.) The Wright Brothers exhibit, even though it has the Flyer at eye-level, is pretty uninspiring, as is ... honestly ... the "America by Air" exhibit. The place does have a somewhat dated feel to it, but from what I've been told the updating of the museum in recent years has been restrained by needing to get Udvar-Hazy moving, plus the need to do a lot of maintenance on the 30-year-old building (all the ceiling glass has needed to be replaced, for instance). OTOH, the new UAV exhibit looks very cool ... but it'll only act to present a contrast with the more dated WWII and Carrier Aviation exhibits it sits between.

So from my pov, it looks like attendence spiked up at the same time the big news-making exhibits happened, then dropped off when they went away.

2.) The last 10-15 years have seen significant growth in the number of activities possible inside the city. There's now the Holocaust Museum, the International Spy Museum, the Verizon Center, the FDR Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, the WWII Memorial, the American Indian Museum occupying roughly the same "space" as NASM Mall. The Newseum is reopening in VERY nice Penn Ave digs, right next to the Canadian Embassy, tomorrow. Baseball has been back in the city for three years now, and the brand new stadium just opened. The US Capitol Visitors center is about to open too.

Looking outside the city, Mt. Vernon, which used to be a 1/2 day trip, can now easily occupy a full day with all the living farm activities plus the brand-new interactive visitors center. And that's not counting people who want to head a couple miles up the road to visit the rebuilt Washington gristmill and distillery. The result is lots more activities to chew into people's time. So maybe instead of visiting NASM every trip to DC, tourists and school groups are going once and then not repeating the visit on the next trip back. And my guess is that this effect is also resulting (as was mentioned in the articles) in Udvar-Hazy acting as a draw away from the Mall Museum.

Udvar-Hazy is phenominal. I don't find the $12 parking fee offensive, considering that it costs more than that for a person to go see a first-run movie ... alone. Split amongst a family of four it works out to $3 a person and for people who go more than four times a year the $50 annual pass is a pretty good deal. The challenge is that getting out to Dulles is a hike ... and with the Metro Silver Line to Dulles being put on hold (not that it would have made it all the way out there for another 10 years) there isn't going to be a good way of getting folks out there other than to revive the bus service ... which was an abject failure.

The thing about Udvar-Hazy is that it IS always changing. The last year or two have seen the additions of the P-61, the RF-8, the F-14D, the H-19 and -34, the Fossett Global Flyer (which flew in) and in the last couple months the F-105D and C-121. The rest of the Uh-219 should be coming in soon and the museum is scheduled to get an F-117 after they are retired (last I heard was it'll show up sometime in June). They do some really phenominal events there, "Air&Scare" on Halloween, the big annual "Become a Pilot Day" open house and fly-in (coming up on June 14th) and a couple years back they did a Summer film series where they showed historic aviation movies on the IMAX screen (12 O'Clock High was one of them). For the Tomcat Sunset event they had well-attended day of events topped off by a showing of Topgun on the IMAX (they should have double-featured with Final Countdown, imho).

Anyways, that's my ramble (especially since it kinda grew into more of an essay as I typed). I'm not sure how, in the sort of museum-saturated, competitive environment that DC is turning into, it's going to be possible for NASM ... or any of the museums ... to be able to retain their attendence numbers.

Garth-

Excellent points... thanks for the perspective!

gunny

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Scott 'Gunny' Perdue
www.scottperdue.com

One other thing that has happened is that schools aren't doing field trips like they used to. I grew up, and currently reside, in suburban, MD. I know we did at least two field trips specifically to the NASM on the Mall. When we'd go home, we'd be so excited that our parents would HAVE to take us back there.

My niece and nephew are in the same school system now. It's a rare occasion when they get to go on a field trip. Even my daughter, who is in a preschool program through the school system has only gone on a field trip to a farm around Halloween to pick up a pumpkin.