California Academy of Sciences

The parts of the Academy run on their own clocks, which is the thing to plan around. The Osher Rainforest opens later than the rest of the museum and stops admitting visitors before the building closes, so it cannot be left to the last half hour of the day; Morrison Planetarium showtimes need a reservation, with the schedule published on the daily calendar. Thursday evenings are not part of the family offer at all: NightLife is an adults-only event with ID checks at the door, so a Thursday visit has to end before it starts. Members get their own quiet slots before the doors open to everyone on two mornings a week. The trade-off is the planetarium: it is the one attraction the youngest children cannot join, and the Academy sets a floor on age as well as a warning about the shows, so families with toddlers effectively pay for a building where one dome stays shut to them. Tickets cost more in the busy periods — spring break, the summer months, holiday weekends and the November and December holidays — than in the rest of the year.