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The Silverstone Interactive Museum

Florian Buechting Museums & Exhibitions No Comments

25 GBP
3.9

Rating

 3.9/5

Flyctory.com Pros

  • Nice collection of items
  • Good historic overview
  • Some good interaction

Flyctory.com Cons

  • Surprisingly high military scope
  • No track tour / accesss

A Rock of Ages musical weekend in Milton Keynes gave me the opportunity to visit a place I have been aiming to have a look into for quite a while. The Silverstone Interactive Museum is giving you an insight of the history of the famous race course. You also have a large collection of original racing items. Here is the review of my visit.

 

Silverstone Museum – Location & Admission

The Silverstone Museum is located quite in the middle between London and Birmingham, not too far away from the city of Milton Keynes and South of the village of Silverstone. The most convenient way to go there is travel by car, public transport is limited. Rather recently, the Hilton Garden Inn Silverstone opened right at the race track, which might be a sensible accommodation option in case you need one.

The museum opening times move by season and whether it is a weekday or a weekday. Typically, the museum is opening doors at 10:00 and closing at 16:00 or 17:00, with a last admission two hours before closing. Admission on the day is 25 GBP – if you book online, you can reduce that to 22.50 GBP. The fun fact to that fare is that a one-day admission is giving you admission for 12 additional months after you visit. There are on-top experiences I did not check out, including 30 minute simulator session (25 GBP). The museum is also arranging drive experiences.

 

Silverstone Museum – The Visit

The museum is split into ten sections. Join The Grid is the very first one, giving you an audiovisual presentation and somehow setting “the right mood” for your visit. After the course as such is introduced, there is quite a focus on the history of the race course as the airfield RAF Silverstone. Thereby the museum tries to be interactive. Especially in this military section of the museum, some of them felt questionable to me. For example, you there is a simulator shooting opponent airplanes.

However, there are also some really cool. One is for example to build an own race car on a screen-driven simulation and see how it is performing. Later sections of the museum also more and more deal with the nature of the place as a race course. This also means that you more and more run into cars, drivers’ equipment and trophies as part of your visit. This is a very interesting part of the visit of the museum.

Learn how race cars are working

One of the most interesting parts of the museum visit to me was the Tech Lab. There are a lot of hands on exhibits illustration how technical components are working and which effects they have. This part is well done, even though some exhibits could be more illustrative. Racing Eras is the key section for people who want to see original cars and motorcycles as well as racing memorabilia.

The Ultimate Lap is the tenth and last stage of you visit, which is somehow replacing a tour of the race course as such by a 4D cinema. It is a nice show, which is giving the museum a certain flavor of an amusement park.

You can also step out of a rear door of the museum and have a look at the race course. Apart from driving experiences, I did not spot any tours of the track and the facilities. During my visit, there were some historic race cars practicing.

 

Silverstone Museum – Services

The lobby of The Silverstone Interactive Museum features an average size souvenir shop. The cafe next to it was very popular among visitors during my visit.

 

Silverstone Museum – My View

The Silverstone Interactive Museum comes with a set of some quite nice ideas and exhibits. Some of them are failing to me and I don’t agree to the strong focus on Silverstone as an air base. However, later parts of the collection are really nice and visiting Silverstone is overall a really good experience.

 

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