Awesome museum- lots to see here! Great location and very impressive area.
More parking would be a good idea (be prepared to pay $16) and the line to pay was short but painfully slow- a quicker system needs to be found and implemented.
Contrary to other reviewer(s) I found the staff to be courteous and helpful.

Lots to see and do; additional fees for "special" exhibits can really run the cost up; Beautiful museum and laid out well. Good lunch at Corner Bakery--much better than most. Lots of school groups, but as long as you stayed away from the areas where they were, it didn't bother me. Of all the Chicago museums on the City Pass, this was my favorite.

Having been to this museum both as a kid and as an adult the exhibits, in their own way rival the Natural History Museum in New York, the Smithsonian in DC ,or the British Museum in London.

Like all great museums, each has its own focus. An afficionado of any of the worlds great museums will find something of interest here.

Our most recent trip approximately 2 weeks ago[ about 12/3/08,] was severely disrupted by noisy school groups. Disruption included horseplay and wrestling in front of rest rooms. Yelling across the beautiful main hall of the museum as well as running in that locale as well. We gave up and left.

I would hope the museum would institute behavior codes, as seeing the Chicago Public School Sytem "at work"was singularly depressing anyway.

Visitors need to accomodate this type of behavior and schedule their visits for the afternoon. Good luck!

Our main aim for our Chicago stopover (between Amtrak journeys) was to visit the Field Museum. We are sooo glad we did. It is brilliant, so much to see.

We spent a second day there, after checking out and leaving our cases at the Essex Inn, as our train did not leave until evening.
Did the huge 'earth timeline' exhibit - with lunch break!

Speaking of lunch -the Corner bakery cafe in the museum has a good range of tasty food at not unreasonable prices. And the staff there are great -spent ages telling us how to save a dollar on our lunch choices (bit of an American/Australian language barrier!) Allow plenty of time for this institution -it's worth it.