Visited on Friday June 12th
On a hot summer day, there’s nothing quite like the satisfaction a cold, sweet treat like ice cream delivers. Now imagine a place where you can have as much of it as your heart desires in a fun, colorful environment, and you’ve got yourself the Museum of Ice cream (MOI).
Lucky for New Englanders, one of the six MOI locations is located right in Boston’s Seaport District. Even luckier, I visited so you can get the scoop (ha, get it?) on the experience before you dish out the (cookie) dough. I’ll stop with the puns, I promise.
Looking for a way to cool down from the over 90 degree temps earlier in the day, my husband and I visited MOI on a Friday evening at 4:30 p.m.
When we arrived to the Seaport, we were early. The MOI tickets say to arrive 10 minutes early, but we were about 30 minutes ahead of time. Not wanting to wait in the outdoor queue lines, we went looking for some A/C and a late lunch.
We happened upon Pressed Cafè located in what I am deeming a “multi use space.” The indoor area has lots of seating and a few cafès as well as bathrooms and A/C!
My husband ordered a Reuben sandwich with a side of mediterranean pasta salad and I ordered a side of the pasta salad and a Fruit Cup smoothie.
He said the sandwich was good and he really enjoyed the pasta salad. I thought the pasta salad was just okay. It had a little too much vinegar for my taste. The smoothie was very refreshing on such a hot day. Since I knew we would be eating a ton of icecream, I opted for a smoothie without milk so it was light, too! Our order total was $34.51. A little on the pricier side, but about what I would expect for Boston.
While we were eating, our time window for MOI was quickly approaching. Not wanting to rush, I decided to see how easy it would be to reschedule our reservation for 30 minutes later to 4:30 p.m.
All I had to do was click on “Manage your reservation through the guest portal” at the bottom of the email with our tickets and it brought me to a page to reschedule.
Thankfully, the slot at 4:30pm was the same price as the 4 p.m. slot. MOI uses dynamic pricing based on when you visit. They stagger entries to help with crowding.
For the 4 p.m. slot on a Friday night, I paid $77.98 for two tickets. Without fees the slot was listed as $33 per person, but I saw slots for up to $40 per person later in the evening. You have to book your tickets in advance on their website, but you can book on the same day you visit, as long as there are still tickets left during the time slot you want.
I highly recommend filling out the waiver ahead of time, too! It will be a clickable link in your ticket confirmation email.
After we ate, we headed over to the MOI. There are line queues set up with time slot designations on signs. We jumped in the 4:30 p.m. line and an employee scanned our ticket. Since I rescheduled, our waivers were deleted so we had to scan a QR code on the employee’s device to re-sign the waivers.
Waivers re-signed, the very friendly employee let us into the building where we stood in a little lobby area with a group of three other guests. Another employee welcomed us as we entered and brought us to a freezer where we could pick our first treat of the evening. They were offering Boston Cream Pie frozen desert bars or fruit popsicles. We both went with the Boston Cream Pie deserts. They were rich and delicious! The custard was frozen so it was the perfect crunchy, melt in your mouth texture.
After a few minutes, we were led into a new room by another employee. He instructed us to chose an ice cream name for ourselves as we were about to become ice cream scoops. That’s right, at the Museum of Ice Cream you too are ice cream.
There’s a little desk with name tags and pens for you to write your new name on. I chose the name Sprinkles and my husband chose Coffee Swirl.
As you might be able to tell by the weird saturation of some of the photos, the lighting in the MOI is interesting. I think it’s lit in a weird hue to make the colors pop more, but it became overwhelming for me, and even my husband who isn’t sensory sensitive, pretty quickly. It took a few minutes for our eyes to adjust once we left.
New names chosen, the employee let us read the “terms and conditions” to becoming an icecream scoop. He pulls them up quick so there’s no possible way you can read them! 😉
Then, the door behind the terms and conditions opened and we could either climb two flights or stairs or take an elevator up to the museum itself.
Once at the top, we were greeted by a warm employee who addressed us as “scoops!” She told us where to start our journey through the museum.
The first room is reminiscent of a typical museum with fun facts and displays, but there’s a fun interactive twist to getting the information as opposed to plaques on a wall.
After becoming an expert on icecream, we boarded the Creamliner. A simulated airplane with “Frostyland” set as the destination.
A fun and personable employee sat us, asked if we had allergies, and prepared us for take off by teaching us how to buckle up with imaginary ice cream cones!
During our journey, the employee came out with a delicious cup of pineapple and vanilla swirl soft serve. It was my favorite icecream of the experience and was very reminiscnet of Dole Whip! For those who read my Canobie Lake Park review: I finally got some Dole Whip! 🥲
The Creamliner is a fun and imaginative experience! The audio during the simulated journey is at a comfortable level. The only loud part is when the flight attendant asks for some excitement from the crowd. Everyone screams loudly, so be prepared to cover your ears!
After deboarding in Frostyland, we entered the larger than life freezer room with rows upon rows of freezer doors to open and explore! Each freezer door is a bubblegum pink, retro style design with MOI’s name across the front.
I made a YouTube video about our experience at MOI where you can explore more doors with me!
The next room is where freezers are usually housed: the kitchen, of course! The kitchen has interactive elements like a jumbo cookie that rises when you turn on the oven, some cookies burning on a plate and a pink stand mixer ready to whip up a dessert! The longer you stay and play in a room, the more there is to see!
Every good kitchen needs a relaxing living room to enjoy your freshly baked treats in and MOI delivers just that! The next room to explore is a living room complete with a cookie couch, a secret hidden room (can you guess where it is?), and a huge TV starring you or your friends! There are also sweet treats in the room, both real and fake!
That’s right, here is our next ice cream treat stop! By ringing a little bell on a desk in the corner of the room, a turn table spins and provides you with a little ice cream sandwich featuring two chocolate chip cookies!
I love how there are so many hidden details and interactive fun within each room. Many people passed right by the bells and missed out on the treat. You really have keep an eye out while you’re wandering the museum!
As a side note, the hidden room is a nice reprieve from the noise. While we enjoyed our experience, we found many rooms quite loud due to large groups and children. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s something to keep in mind. I would consider bringing headphones with me next time.
There’s a hallway that takes you from the living room to the next room, but where the MOI has made the walls magnetic so you can spell out whatever you’d like. They also have prompts on the walls, such as “Im grateful for” and “I am from,” if you want to share your thoughts!
The next room is my favorite and I don’t remember it from my visit to MOI last year, so I believe it’s new! What do many ice cream sundae’s usually include?
Bananas, of course! This next room is full of pink and yellow bananas for you to walk through. There’s a defined path that guides you through the hanging bananas without having to touch them, or you can just walk right through them! They’re made of silicone so they’re soft and squishy. I loved walking through them over and over again. I had the most fun getting my YouTube footage in this room.
The next room is pure colorful fun! It includes a neon rainbow arch hallway that uses forced perspective to create some fabulous photos. The room even has a hanger made for your phone to sit in so you can set your camera timer and take photos without anyone’s help. I think that’s such a creative addition!
This area can get a little crowded since people stop to take photos. We felt a little rushed through, but ended up waiting a little bit in the next room and returning to get a few more photos.
Speaking of the next room, the best way I can describe it is a baseball themed, very pink, free for all arcade. There are a variety of games that you may find in an arcade like pin ball, Skee-Ball and the basketball hoop game with a baseball themed twist.
There’s a massive gumball machine in the center of the room that dispenses red foam baseballs (free of charge) to play the games with. There’s even a photo booth area with different costumes!
The arcade area is also home to our next ice cream stop! It’s baseball themed of course: Cracker Jack! I really enjoyed the buttery popcorn base, but the pieces were too sticky for my liking and tasted like bitter dark chocolate.
The next room is the final room. It has a converyor belt offering up a very unique icecream flavor: Lobster Roll. The roll is even included!
In the room there is also an area with headphones and writing utensils for you to play a game. We couldn’t get the headphones to work for us though.
We were both unsure about the lobster icecream so we decided to just grab one tray of it to split. This final room leads to the diner area with lots of seating and a bar. We found a table and hunkered down with our icecream.
Unfortunately, we both hated the Lobster ice cream. It really did taste like a fishy lobster! My husband and I don’t like lobster, so our dislike for it means they nailed the flavor!
The bar at the MOI offers snacks and drinks. I grabbed a water bottle to prepare for the heat outside, but also because I’m obsessed with cherries (and the color pink) and wanted the water bottle as a keepsake. It was quite pricey, ringing in at $6.
Now, at this point you might be wondering how we’ll return back to the first floor. The stairs? Or perhaps the elevator? Well, actually there’s a (not so) secret third option: a slide! And yes, it is for ALL ages!
You’re given a mat that kind of looks like a pillow case. You put your feet in the pockets and when the employee gives you the go ahead you lie back and shimmy to start sliding!
The employee monitoring the slide was so sweet. She called us by our scoop names which was so cute. She could tell I was a little nervous about sliding but she was so encouraging and kind.
The slide was longer than I expected, but very fun and I felt safe so I enjoyed myself!
The slide drops you off to a separate part of the first floor from where you enter the museum. This part of the MOI has a sprinkle pool! The room is themed like an actual pool, but instead of water there’s large, pink plastic sprinkles!
There were so many people that I couldn’t get a very good picture of the pool. It was very busy in this room the last time we visited too. I think it’s because this room is the last stop at the museum, so people spend more time in here if they aren’t ready to leave yet.
Again, all ages are allowed in the pool, too! You just have to take your shoes off and leave them in cubbies.
Fair warning, the pool is VERY hard to move around in. It’s like quick sand and is quite the work out to free yourself. Also, you may be able to tell from the photo, but the lighting in here is some of the weirdest and hurt our eyes after a bit.
After fighting for our lives in the sprinkle pool, we exited to the gift shop and called it a successful date night!
Sensory and Accessibility Aspects
Noise 3/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Overall, the MOI was quite loud during our visit. The music and interactive elements aren’t at a high volume, but the groups enjoying the attractions were loud.
There are Kulture City (see my Lego Discovery Center review for more info on them!) logos indicating quiet areas, but multiple times we were in a quiet area and someone would come in and start shouting. The MOI chose poor spots for these quiet areas like behind one of the freezer doors or in the last room where everyone exits.
I mentioned to my husband that it felt a little offensive that they just seemingly slapped the “Quiet Area” sings up without much care of where or enforcement. It’s nothing like the care the Lego Discovery Center puts into ensuring their attraction has sensory safe spaces.
By the end of the time spent roaming the museum, we were both overstimulated with the noise and ready to leave.
Crowds 4/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
MOI uses a staggered entry system to decrease crowding. I think this system does a good job at keeping crowds low.
While there were other people in most rooms with us, there were only a few other groups with us and the rooms are spread out enough where we weren’t on top of other people.
I do wonder about later in the evening, when pricing is higher, if the crowds are bigger. This time, my husband and I visited on a Friday in the early evening and there were a handful of groups in each room with us roaming around. My sister and I went to MOI on a rainy Sunday afternoon in the spring and we were practically alone in every room.
The worst spot for crowding is the sprinkle pool, so depending on how busy it is, you may want to skip it.
Smells 5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Even though there’s ice cream galore, there are no overwhelming or bothersome smells in the museum.
Lighting 3/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This was such a hard rating to determine. On one hand, the lighting functions as it’s supposed to and works with the colors in the museum to make them really pop. It creates a colorful, imaginative and immersive attraction. However, the lighting paired with the bright colors is overstimulating after a while and hurt our eyes.
As a sensory sensitive person, I found it difficult to ground myself a couple of times due to the off lighting playing with my vision. My husband is not sensory sensitive and once we made it to the diner after exploring the museum he commented on how the lighting was overstimulating him.
Temperature 5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
We were both comfortable for our entire time here, despite it being over 90 degrees outside! My husband even runs hot and he didn’t complain of being too warm (which is his most common complaint at most places 😂).
Spots for Decompressing 2/5 ⭐️⭐️
There aren’t many spots to take a breather where it’s truly quiet or calm. However there is a place to sit in the living room area and seating in the diner.
There is a secret door in the living room area that offers a nice place to decompress. If you look at the bookcase and pull the red “book” (especially when no one is looking) you can enter into a quiet, dark room for a reprieve from the action. However, expect people to follow you if they see you open the door!
Using one of the freezer doors, you can walk into a little secret tunnel that is designated as a quiet area. However, when we went in there someone came running in shouting loudly. I felt there wasn’t much care in where the quiet zones were placed.
Accessibility 5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I’m very impressed with the accessibility of the MOI. There are elevators to take you to the museum and each room has plenty of room for mobility devices to navigate. Most interactive elements are lower for kids and those on mobility devices to easily reach.
The sprinkle pool has a handicap accessible pool lift to allow everyone to be able to enjoy the attraction!
MOI Boston is also home to the best handicap accessible restroom we’ve seen on the blog!
Restroom Rundown 5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The bathrooms at the MOI are clean, spacious and colorful! They have automatic sinks, easy grab paper towel dispensers and toilets. There are also many stalls to chose from so you likely won’t have to wait in a line even if it’s very busy. However, there’s only one sink so you might have to wait to wash up.
In terms of accessibility, there is a single room handicap accessible bathroom, but there’s also a handicap accessible stall in the main bathroom with an automatic flushing toilet that has grab bars around it. The stall doesn’t just include a toilet though, it also has a sink with an automatic soap dispenser and easy grab paper towels! There is also a changing table in the stall.
My mom loves handicap stalls with sinks because she doesn’t have to manuever her scooter in a potentially busy bathroom. She can just wash her hands on her own. Given that, I scored this restroom 5 stars!
General Review-y Aspects
Pricing 3/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
MOI prices based on the time you visit. The cheapest time slot is $33 and the most expensive is $40. However, there is a $5.99 fee/tax per ticket, so the cheapest time slot is really $38.99. I wouldn’t pay more than that for the experience, personally, but even at the lowest price point they offer it feels a bit high for what you get.
Yes, you can technically go around the museum as many times as you want and get as much ice cream as you want. However, most visitors are going to go around once, which takes about an hour, and call it a day. For an hour and a handful of treats, I think $38.99 per person with fees (if you select a $33 time slot) is a little too much.
Atmosphere 4/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I very much enjoy the atmosphere at the MOI. The entire museum is bright pink, which is an automatic win in my book 😉, but it also has thoughtful interactive details that add to the whimsy and imaginative world the museum creates.
The noise level could be overwhelming at times, but I think the unique environment makes up for it. However, I would pack headphones or ear plugs next time.
Cleanliness 4/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Overall, the museum was very clean. There were employees taking the trash out in the diner when we were there and a maintenance employee walking through some of the rooms.
The only spot that I think could use some cleaning attention is the Creamliner seats. You can see in the photo above that they have visible dirt on them. Fabric is so hard to keep clean in an attraction setting like this, so it makes sense why they look a bit dingy.
Customer Service 5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
All of the employees we interacted with were lovely and made the experience fun/interactive for guests!
The employee overseeing the slide was an absolute delight. She was greeting guests as they entered the museum to tell them where to start and sending guests down the slide cheerfully. I noticed she kept her foot on the slide mat to ensure no one would accidentally slip down before the slide was clear. She kept a close eye on an iPad camera that showed her the bottom of the slide. I felt really safe knowing she was so diligent! She also addressed everyone by their scoop name, which was a cute touch!
Location/Parking 4/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I think the location is great! It’s in the Seaport District which is accessible via the Silver Line. It’s also walkable from South Station, a main transportation hub. There are also parking garages in the area if you’d rather take your car, but they are pricey.
The area where the MOI is located is home to many restaurants, shops and entertainment venues if you want to keep the fun going after your visit. We love the climate controlled multi-use space where we sat and enjoyed our bites from Pressed as well.
TLDR Ratings
Overall 3/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Sensory 3/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Accessibility 5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Highlight ✨
The interactive/imaginative exhibits!
Lowlight 😖
Not enough to do to justify the ticket price.
Hey, I’m going to the Museum of Ice Cream! Want to come?
Yeah, I think so!
Although our experience was challenging on the sensory side, overall it was a joyful and unique way to spend an hour eating icecream on a hot summer day. In the future, I wouldn’t attend a time slot that is priced above $33 and I would pack some headphones or ear plugs!
Recommendations for Visiting
- Check out the site before you go and chose the lowest priced time slot
- Make sure you go in hungry! This is not the place to visit right after a hearty meal.
- Bring headphones or earplugs with you if you are sensitive to noise.
- Wear a photo ready outfit! There are tons of photo ops throughout the museum and the experience is marketed for photos!
- Skip the diner if you’re looking to save money. You can bring water in with you, so I recommend doing that to avoid the hefty drink costs.
We enjoyed the whimsy of The Museum of Ice Cream. In a world where things can feel a little too serious most of the time, roaming around an extremely zany museum dedicated to ice cream is the perfect escape.
Thank you for reading my review! I appreciate your support! I know I’ve been a wee bit behind schedule with my reviews lately. Transparently, I’ve had some personal concerns to attend to. I appreciate your patience and plan to be back on track in the coming weeks! As always, thank you for stopping by! ☺️
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