Caterpillar has been a part of Peoria forever it seems. Now they have given the community a great visitor center. This is for the young and old. There is a store in the building you can get your Caterpillar gifts from. We will take our friends from out of toen again
It is an informative and fun experience. Caterpillar does a very nice job of giving you information & then turns you loose to experience the equipment.
Several diggers, dump trucks, dozers, and virtual simulators to entertain all members of the family. Six virtual simulators allowed kids to cycle through without many lines in a compact space focused on the equipment lines that Cat carries. Kids free.
Very cool visitors center. My daughter loved being able to go into the different machines and pretend like she was diving them. Also the simulators were neat too. The people working there were very helpful and friendly. Kids were free and adults were just $7. The whole place took us about 2 hours.
Took my family for a day visit. Was fun climbing into real machines and also using simulators to operate dozers and excavators. Plenty to look at and read about the history of the company and it's people. I would return Adults 7 bucks kids under 12 are free
How cool is this, you walk into the CAT visitors center and the first thing you do it get into the bed of a 797 with rumble seats and a movie starts playing showing you CAT products and different parts of the world. All while you are riding in the truck, its loud, your chair is rumbling and the movie is simply just AWESOME!!!! After the movie you go downstairs to tour actual real machines and then you can get into a Bulldozer or Excavator simulator and take one for a test drive.
Give yourself a lot of time if you want to experience each of the display rooms and exhibits - there's a lot to see and experience! They also have great meeting spaces on the upper level with great views of the Illinois River and the city.
We enjoyed it very much! Going inside the large truck and watching the movie was very fun and interesting! Loved the rumbling chair! Going into the different trucks, and trying to operate virtual trucks! My husband put 3 hours on the parking meter, & I thought that was too much, but we spent that whole time there. The time flew by!
We had only about 1.5 hours left in our trip, and my 8 yo really wanted to go. The size of the equipment is absolutely astonishing, as someone who has never seen a 797 up close. The Sims were really cool too. I think one of the best things was that in the intro film the CEO says that the visitors center is for 3 groups - employees, the community of Peoria, and for their customers. I don't fit into any of those categories, but what a great message. KUDOS and well done!
Not for everyone, but little boys of all ages (and genders) will love playing with the machines. No, you can't actually start them up but one can imagine.