San Jose: The Smartest City In America (as seen on The TODAY Show)

In case you missed it - San Jose was featured on The TODAY Show this morning. In their "Healthy, Wealthy, Wise" segment, they showed a video about the innovative and awesome place we call home - San Jose.

Check out the video:

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STAR WARS Exhibit Opens This Saturday at The Tech!

This week, The Tech Museum of Innovation held a press conference for the upcoming exhibit, STAR WARS: Where Science Meets Imagination. If you've walked or driven past the Tech Museum lately, then you've seen the giant billboard with Yoda and Darth Vader wrapped around the corner of the building.

Well it's finally time to see what they've been hyping the last few months. Starting this Saturday, October 19th and running through February 23, 2014, fanboys and girls from all ages will have the opportunity to learn the science of Star Wars, and check out some pretty awesome movie props at the same time.

Throughout the 10,000-square-foot exhibition will be props, costumes, and models from all six Star Wars films. (Similar to the previous Mythbusters exhibit, if you attended it.)

"Visitors will be exposed to immersive, hands-on experiences and to topics ranging from space travel, mechanical prosthetics, robotics, and levitation technology."

There were many of these hands-on exhibits -- build a robot, ride what looks like a lawnmower that hovers a bit off the ground, and others.

One of the hyped features of this exhibit is the Millennium Falcon™ experience. It is a full-size replica of the cockpit. Which means it's fairly small since it only has four seats. If you or your kids are a big fans of Star Wars, try to sit in the front two seats to get the full experience. Inside this replica you get to learn about "real-world space exploration" narrated by Anthony Daniels (aka, C-3PO.) I glanced at my watch before checking this out and as it turns out it's about five minutes long. Because it's five minutes and only four people can experience it at a time, there might be a long wait to get in depending when you go.

Which is why there are separate tickets if you choose to check it out. At first, I thought it was merely a ticket that simply secured your spot in line at any point in the day. Let me clarify, I thought the ticket was free.

The difference between the two ticket packages, "Jedi Package" and "Star Wars" - tis that "Jedi" guarantees your voyage on The Millennium Falcon Experience while "Star Wars" does not. The price difference? Adult price for "Jedi Package" is $27, "Star Wars" is $22. If $5 is not much to you, buy the ticket and watch the 5 minute educational video on space. Or look at it as spending $5 to possibly sit in the front two seats and push fake buttons and watch the screen go all hyper-spacey in front of you.

I'm not a die-hard Star Wars fan (my husband is, therefore all my exposure to the movies is through his brainwashing influence) -- so personally, knowing what the "experience" is, I would not pay $5 for it. 

However, if you do decide, what the heck, and pay the $5 to sit in the cockpit (it does provide some fun photo opportunities and kids will enjoy it) -- then once you get into the exhibit, walk through the whole thing first, so you can check out the line at the The Millennium Falcon Experience (it's at the end, just before the merchandise area.) There were signs that will give you an idea of how long of a wait you will have - 30 minutes, 90 minutes etc. Check out the current wait, determine when you need to stand in line.

Overall it's a fun exhibit with plenty of things to entertain and educate everyone!

If you'd like to see a few more photos I took, follow this link to my Flickr set.

Where: The Tech Museum of Innovation
When: Oct 19 - Feb 23
Tickets: Various packages/prices