Bellevue Indoor Activities

The Children's Museum, Seattle inspires curiosity and creativity in children between 10 months and 10 years with 22,000 square feet of hands-on exhibits that explore science, arts, and cultural education. The museum's collection of permanent exhibits boosts brainpower with feats of engineering, miniature global villages, an aquarium, and a theater, where kids can don costumes and reenact famous monologues from Sponge Bob. The museum heightens the joy of discovery with such activities as summer camps, birthday parties, partnership outreach, and after-hours events.

The SIFF Cinema team scours the globe in search of extraordinary films. Their mission is to bring the community—and the world—together through quality international showings, and they host premieres, classic films, and revivals at the SIFF Cinema Uptown and the SIFF Film Center 365 days each year.

As one of the largest and best-attended film festivals in the U.S., the Seattle International Film Festival reaches more than 150,000 moviegoers each year. The 25-day festival presents more than 250 features and 150 short films from more than 70 countries during its run, giving people a perfect excuse to try out an all-popcorn diet.

Since 1987, the national championship dancers at Washington Dance Club have been steadily whittling away at an excess of left feet with their social and competitive dance classes. Students cut rugs of all stripes in the historic Avalon Ballroom, twirling through ballroom, Latin, and swing sessions atop the 1930s ballroom's 3,000-square-foot sprung-maple dance floor. The team of instructors work with beginners, professionals, and top-hat wearing skeletons looking to revamp their image in private and group lessons, workshops, and weekly dance parties.

Since the 1950s, the Seattle University Athletics program has been all over the collegiate athletic landscape, leaving their post as a vaunted member of the NCAA Div. I for the NAIA in the 1970s, where they stayed until the fall of 2002, when they entered the NCAA Div. II. Though the school’s history chronicles periods of turbulence, it also encompasses a laundry list of indelible athletes; basketball Hall of Fame inductee Elgin Baylor led the Redhawks to an NCAA Championship game in 1958, and tennis star Tom Gorman was twice selected as an NCAA All-American, paving the way to a pro career in which he attained a top-10 worldwide ranking. In its relatively brief time in the NCAA Div. II, the Redhawks have won two NCAA titles in men’s swimming and one men’s soccer championship, for which the team was awarded rights to the Seattle Space Needle.

Since 2000, Camp Jitterbug has grown from an intimate soiree with only about 100 students to a leading force in the swing-dancing world. It now occupies spaces throughout Seattle, inviting swing bands to play non-stop for four days as a multitude of dancers hone their skills in workshops and evening dance sessions. These workshops cater to specific skill levels, combining expert instruction with live music for a three-day learning experience. Evening dance festivities then begin around 8:30 p.m. and go until the last horn falls silent at around 5 a.m., giving dancers eight-and-a-half hours to put their newfound skills to the test. The next day, the organizers invite dancers back to do it all again, encouraging them to allow the joy of dance to overshadow any lingering exhaustion or soreness from the day before.

Meanwhile, the dancers of Jump Session Show punctuate the weekend with performances and demonstrations. The rug-cutters wow crowds with intricate, precisely timed dance moves, just like desperate presidential candidates during their final debate.

The Seattle Mariners have represented Washington since 1977. And since 1999, the team has dazzled hometown crowds under the lights at Safeco Field. The park boasts an elaborate scoreboard system that features an old-fashioned, hand-operated left-field scoreboard. A convertible rooftop covers the ballpark without closing it off, preserving an open-air environment that allows fans to bask in fresh spring breezes. Fans cheer on the Mariners amid the family-friendly surroundings as the Mariner Moose uses elaborate hand signals and oversize cue cards to lead his baseball platoon in choreographed home run dance numbers and sub-arctic migrations.