Union Station, KC.......and Narnia

About ten years ago, the train station, Union Station was restored and opened to the public. It is very large similar to all of the ones around the US including the one in Washington DC. The building itself is very impressive to see but the different featured exhibits that they have there are very interesting. A few years back they were sending the Titanic exhibit around the country and we saw it there. It had real items from the Titanic that had been brought up and they had recreated the state rooms that people stayed in while traveling on the boat. It was fantastic and eventually we saw a similar exhibit here in Des Moines at our science center. The basement of the Union Station is large and they have a permanent science center down there as well as a theatre and other exhibit space.


If you are not a Narnia fan, you can just stop reading here. When we were visiting there they had the Narnia Exhibition. It was created to display all of the original costumes of all of the actors and authentic props from the two movies, Narnia and Prince Caspian based on the books by C.S. Lewis. They tied the exhibit into science related teaching. It was a very nice presentation. They showed how they made the shields and swords. They had the actual street light of the opening scene and did I tell you that we had to walk through the closet doors to get into Narnia. A model of the castle used in the shooting of the second movie and scenes of the actual set show the most remarkable large set I have seen. They didn't do a fake castle scene with computers but had an actual castle set created. When they made the first movie they had a forest with snow it was an actual set up inside of a very large building with trees and rocks. Need I say that Disney spent millions without a worry knowing they would quadruple their money.
The one remarkable exhibit was the actual scene set up of the little beaver house. The whole scene was there and all their little props. If you want to see over 250 costumes, flags, swords, large chests of gold items, hundreds of actual props,walk through the effects of a snow machine and view how they created the movie on many digital screens, it is worth your time to see it. It was a very creative exhibit of a very creatively made set of movies. If it comes to a city near you I think you might find it interesting. Thanks for reading......