Mercedes-Benz Museum with Kids
Tips and Tricks for visiting the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany with Kids.
You can’t visit Stuttgart, Germany and not check out one of the car museums. Stuttgart is home to both the Mercedes Museum and the Porsche Museum. We opted to visit the Mercedes Museum for a morning. Little did we know what a hit it would be with the whole family.
Parking at the Mercedes Museum is a few Euros, you get a discount if you eat at the cafe. We brought a stroller with us for the Middle Little and had the Little Little in the carrier. It is a lot of walking, so I recommend a non-walking option for your little ones.
Purchase your tickets at the ticket counter and then you head over to pick up your audio guide. Be aware that they do not want to give audio guides to the kids. We had to insist that the kids get them in order for both the Big (6) and Middle (4) be given the guides. The guides are touch screen and easy to use. There is even a children’s audio tour option.
I think the museum is missing a real opportunity to offer a kids scavenger hunt or other children’s program if they don’t want the kids to have an audio tour. It’s always a more pleasant experience when the kids are entertained.
The audio tour is a mix between audio that starts automatically and scanning specific cars you want to hear more about. I was buddies with the Big Little and he loved picking his favorite car in a gallery and scanning for more information.
You begin by learning about the first motor Mercedes-Benz produced and all the products it was initially integrated into.
There are just a few things for the kids to touch but what is there is super fun. (I wish there was more touch stuff.) The airbag display was perhaps my favorite. It showed how the bag could compress and inflate.
Each floor has a gallery of cars from a particular decade to learn about. There is also a gallery of vehicles based on different themes. Helper vehicles was one of our favorites. The Big Little scanned nearly everything in this gallery.
The entire Mercedes facility is visible from the museum. We enjoyed watching some cars out on the test track while we were there. I wish I could have scanned things on the windows to hear more about what I was seeing.
There is only one car that kids can actually get in. It is a bus that carried soccer fans. I do wish there were a few more cars for the kids to play in, as it is universally something kids love to do.
The boys really couldn’t get enough of all the different types of cars.
I preferred the classic cars. I just love how they look.
The tour ends with an incredible showcase of Mercedes cars as well as race cars.
We spent much longer than we expected at the museum because the boys were so into it. As a result we ended up grabbing a light lunch at the cafe. We sat outside and enjoyed our food until some employees came over and started smoking in the area. I guess that is what we get for sitting outside in Europe!
We’ve been to several car museums and each one focuses on something different to highlight. The Mercedes Museum is very focused on the changing style of the Mercedes. You won’t learn much about how cars work here or how they are built. If you want that, visit the Toyota Museum in Japan. However, this was a great stop in Stuttgart and I still highly recommend the Mercedes Museum.
