USS Hornet Aircraft Carrier With Kids

On presidents day we went to see the USS Hornet Aircraft carrier in Alameda, CA.  I wasn't sure how it would go with our 3 yr old, but she loved it.  Highly recommend it, great day out for big and little kids.  I've tried to include some kid-related intel in this post since I couldn't find much online myself.

USS Hornet

Hangar deck

 We took a docent-led tour up to the bridge, which probably took about 45 minutes. There are a number of steep flights of stairs (in the Navy they call them ladders, which is confusing) to get between decks, and probably about 5 flights to climb up to the bridge.  I wasn't sure how that would go with the 3 yr old, but I just carried her up and down, which was fine.

I think you could take kids of any age around most of the ship as long as you're confident carrying them on steep stairs.  We saw a number of people with babies in carriers.  You'll probably need to get a locker ($3) for your kid-related supplies since they have strict bag size restrictions.

Flight deck

Maverick, call the ball

Good view of the city

On the bridge

The USS Hornet recovered both Apollo 11 and 12!  There's quite a bit of cool NASA gear to see, including the decontamination trailer where they kept astronauts who went to the moon

 After the bridge tour and lunch on the hangar deck (they have a basic cafe with hot dogs and sodas), we went down to the second deck, where you are free to explore the length of the ship.  E loved wandering through all the rooms, as did we.  We probably spent 3.5 hours on the ship all up, and probably could have spent longer still if we didn't have a tired little person.

Ready room

Kitchen

Wardroom