There’s a new way for kids to keep from being bored out of their minds while waiting for their next flight out of San Jose Mineta International Airport. San Jose’s Children’s Discovery Museum has just opened its latest creation called “Zoom Zone” inside Terminal B at Gates 24 and 25. The goal of the new 600 square-foot play area is to educate young kids and toddlers about aviation and flight. The exhibits were created by Discovery Museum fabricators who have been building cool creations for kids for decades.
“There’s no cookie-cutter approach for us. Every exhibit is one-of-a-kind and that includes the Zoom Zone. This is what we do and aviation and flight are irresistible topics. We all know what it’s like traveling with kids,” Children’s Discovery Museum Executive Director Marilee Jennings told Mercury News. The name ‘Zoom Zone’ is derived from the San Jose-based video communications giant Zoom, which kicked in $240,000 of the $1.2 million dollars the airport received for the project in donation funding.
According to www.cdm.org/zoom-zone, there are five exhibits for kids to check out. The biggest appears to be a large bird-shaped slide creation called the ‘Bird Climber’ that allows kids to slide down a bird’s feathers and run under its wings. The Pin Screen allows kids to push different body parts or items into a board of soft pins which creates a 3D-looking impression on the other side. The Kinetic Butterfly teaches kids about the wings of a butterfly and the Zoom Plane lets kids play pilot inside a cockpit.
There’s also an exhibit called Alphabet Airplane that mimics airplane window shades. Each letter of the alphabet displays an in-flight window shade to a city that starts with the corresponding letter. It features cities like Chicago for C, Portland for P, and Reno for R. Each image under the shade that represents the city was created by one of six visual artists around the country.
“We couldn’t be more proud to be at the Airport and to support families traveling into and out of San Jose with a place designed especially for children, but it would not be possible without the vision of so many. It’s truly a Silicon Valley ‘barn-raising that demonstrates San Jose’s commitment to children and families.” Jennings told Aviation Pros.
