So, the media and my fellow bloggers have been shocked that although the skeleton of Lucy has come all the way from Ethiopia to Seattle, Seattleites have not exactly flocked to see it. The fall-out has been rough for the Pacific Science Center, which has lost a ton of dough. Commonly mentioned culprits are the terrible weather during Christmas (and yeah, it was indeed awful) and poor advertising.

My experience with the exhibit suggests that the problem is more likely to be price. Getting into the Pacific Science Center is already pretty spendy — $38 bucks for a family of four. Including the Lucy exhibit was an additional raises the price to $20.75 per adult, and $16.25 for kids over 6 (Sorry PSC — misread the fine print on the web site, but it’s still expensive). So, grand total for a family trip?

About 75 Well over a hundred bucks.

For an experience where there is a 50% chance that the kids are going to get bored in 15 minutes and start begging to hit up the gift shop for mood rings and pneumatic rockets.

So paint me not surprised that people did not exactly flock to the exhibit. Maybe if they’d made it free for kids, more of the adults would have been willing to drag them in to satisfy their own curiosity. But spending an extra $4074 bucks to see Lucy when the less civilized members of the family would rather go watch the PSC’s colony of naked mole rats just doesn’t seem like a rational decision to most parents.

(and yeah, I know that people without kids like science too, but I’m guessing that 90% of the visitors to science centers consist of parents taking their kids to an entertaining weatherproof space where the kiddos can run around and not break stuff).