Merry-Go-Round Museum

Fun museum, and it’s quite interesting to see the carvers at work if they happen to be there during your visit. A ride aboard the museum’s indoor carousel comes with the price of admission… it’s a face-​paced ride (as they used to be in the early days when the merry-​go-​rounds were more of a romantic ride for adults, rather than a slow-​moving kiddie ride), and the ride lasts around 5 minutes! Interesting building as well as it’s a former Post Office and retains some of the features of the building from that time. The building is on the National Historical Register of Places and has a marker out front for that.

Great find! What a neat place to learn about the history of some treasures. They even have carvers here creating new animals. Not very busy when we were there so we had a private tour.

We were the only ones there to get the museum tour and ride on the indoor merry-​go-​round. The tour guide was very pleasant and excited to tell us all about the museum. I loved her enthusiasm. The 3-​year old was a little bored at first but then started to get excited about the rubbing plates. He enjoyed the merry-​go-​round ride as well. I thought it was one of the faster rides than I’ve experienced before. I actually had to have the guide stop it so I could sit down (I was carrying our 9 month old, silly me thought it was going to go slow). I learned a lot about different types of carving styles. Didn’t even know! We entered to win a carousel horse of our own, can’t wait to hear if we win!

First, thank you to the Blue Star Museum program and to this museum for participating in it.
This museum is small — one large room with a carousel in the middle, but I thought it was pretty neat. Take a tour and learn a bit about the museum, see some carousel animals, look at those they’re in the process of carving and then ride the carousel. Even if we hadn’t gotten in free, it would’ve been worth the admission price.
I took my 18-​month-​old and my almost 4-​year-​old and I’d say this isn’t really the ideal place for young kids, at least not my 18-​month-​old because there’s a lot they shouldn’t touch and, if they’re grumpy or screaming it distracts everyone else. However, my almost 4-​year-​old enjoyed riding the carousel and checking out all of the rubbing plates where he could make crayon rubbings of different carousel animals and other carousel-​related scenes.
The older adults that were part of our tour seemed to really enjoy it too — especially feeling like a kid again on the carousel.

Small museum but it was cute, colorful and full of history. We were staying in Marblehead and on a rainy day we turned to tourist magazine for ideas to entertain our two girls, ages 4 and 1. This museum was about 20 min away which was fine. Its in an old post office building, there is an admission cost about $ 6 for adults and 4 and under are free. (And glad to pay it to help keep this cute museum going.) Huge old school and working carousel inside, quite beautiful. your admission gets you coins to ride. My daughter loved riding on it, super long songs. We got to see a volunteer work on sanding a wooden horse carousel, he said it takes about 650 hrs to finish one piece! They have very old, colorful and detailed pieces you can view… and a small gift shop. We spent about 45 minutes there because we rode the carousel twice, daughter got to color and we asked questions and took photos etc. (so I guess it was better for the 4yrd old and not the 1yrd old). If you need to take the kids out, on a rainy day stop by this place. I believe they have a website.

Good for a rainy day. Not super exciting for the little ones on the «tour», but the merry-​go-​round ride does the trick.