Where can small kids interact with animals, pump gas and drive a bus in a mini-city, play engineer on an antique locomotive and admire a movie star's fairy castle?

In Orlando?

Perhaps, but you might also consider venturing 1,150 miles north to Chicago, where you can expect a lot from a place with two children's museums and two zoos. But even museums that might seem stodgy will occupy the minds of rugrats. The city is incredibly kid friendly.

Here is a list of ten top things to do with the little ones in Chicago and its immediate environs, with emphasis on places of substance rather than simple amusement.

Country in the city. City in the city. These phrases might seem discrepant, but both describe active, hands-on galleries in the three-story Chicago Children's Museum at Navy Pier. “Treehouse Trails” is a trip into a simulated forest with a log cabin, a campsite with a tent, a two-story tree house and a mountain stream for net fishing. At the push of a button you hear animal sounds and you can almost smell the embers from last night's campfire.

Kids can design their own skyscrapers in the museum’s newest permanent exhibit, “Skyline.” In “Dinosaur Expedition,” budding Sue Hendricksons dig for dinosaur bones embedded in an excavation pit. (Who is Sue Hendrickson? See The Field Museum, described below.) Photo credit: © 2008 Chicago Children's Museum

Slightly further afield in the suburb of Glenview is the Kohl Children's Museum. Our kids found a shopping trip in the recreated grocery store to be great fun. (Doesn't sound like grocery shopping to us.) They pushed child-sized shopping carts up aisles and filled them with eggs, peas, oatmeal and lots more. Another visiting youngster playing cashier rang up a wagon full of food and charged $10 for all of it. (Definitely doesn't sound like grocery shopping to us.)

For more learning-while-playing, kids can build pick up soft "rocks" using a digger at "Hands on House," make pretend meals for diners at the faux cafe "Potbelly Sandwich Works," and concoct creative crafts at "Adventures in Art." The museum's biggest permanent exhibit is "Music Makers." It allows children the chance to make music on a convoluted contraption called the sound sculpture, and compose their own musical piece and play it on their selection of instruments.

As for the view, the kids won't know the Wrigley Building from the Marina Towers, but they will giggle at boats that look like bathtub toys. “Knee High Chicago,” covering the bottom third of the Skydeck’s core walls, allows young ones to stick their faces in a catcher’s mask to experience what it is like to catch a fastball at Wrigley Field. Other options include looking at swimsuits girls wore to Lake Michigan beaches when William Howard Taft was in the White House, and inspecting the tunnels which run for miles under downtown.

The elevator that takes you to the top in 70 seconds is an added thrill. But you might want to bring something to occupy children's minds as they wait and wait (and wait) for their turn to ride the elevator. Hint: the least busy times to visit are before 11 a.m. and after 4 p.m.

This is one of the country’s best science museums, due simply to the quality and number of permanent exhibits here. Kids can take an old-fashioned train ride aboard the 1934 Pioneer Zephyr from Chicago to Denver (thanks to the magic of virtual reality) and learn about science at the museum's "Idea Factory," with learn-through-play activities designed specifically for kids from infants to age 10. Two of the most famous exhibits deserve mention: Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle, donated by silent film star Moore 60 years ago, is filled with 1,000 miniatures; and the recreated coal mine is where one can enter a miner's world without risking black lung disease. Photo credit: Scott Brownell, Museum of Science and Industry

Chicago boasts one zoo downtown in Lincoln Park and another in suburban Brookfield. Our five-year-old thought the penguins at the Lincoln Park Zoo were most funny. "Those birds fly in the water, not in the air," she laughed. It’s not only the country’s oldest zoo, but one of the few remaining that offers free admission! Highlights include the $23 million African Journey and the interactive Children’s Zoo.

At the Brookfield Zoo is the Hamill Family Play Zoo, where kids can dress up as veterinarians and perform faux medical procedures. Kids love to touch stingrays (additional fee), spot butterflies in the seasonal “Butterflies” exhibit, and interact with farm animals at the petting zoo.

Two permanent exhibits at this museum cater to kids. At “Sensing Chicago,” children of all ages can ride a high-wheel bicycle down a wood-paved street, sniff a Chicago-style hot dog and even catch a fly ball at old Comiskey Park. At the “History a la Cart” family activity stations, create your own Chicago-style bridge or trace the path of the Great Chicago Fire with an oversized map and first-hand accounts.

It’s no LEGOLAND theme park (a la the rides and amusements in Carlsbad, California), but for your LEGO-loving child, the indoor “Discovery Center” next to the Woodfield Mall is a close runner-up. Learn how bricks are made at the factory tour, admire Chicago in miniature with the intricate LEGO sculptures at Miniland, build to your hearts’ content with the thousands of bricks in the “Build & Test Center,” and climb aboard a big green dragon for a ride through a medieval castle.

“Sue,” the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex ever unearthed, was given a permanent home here in May 2000. Encased in the cavernous Stanley Field Hall, Sue at first seemed disappointingly small to our kids -- that is until they looked closely and eyeballed her massive feet and legs, then climbed to the second floor to examine her ponderous skull, too heavy to be mounted on the skeleton. (A life-sized cast takes its place.) What may have most impressed my daughters was the news that it was a woman paleontologist, Sue Hendrickson, who discovered her. (And now you know why she’s named Sue).

If kids want more ways to feel small, they should venture to “Underground Adventure” where they take a walk in a mock subterranean prairie setting alongside animatronic moles, crickets, crayfish and other animals portrayed one hundred times their normal heights. Another highlight for young guests and their parents: the "Crown Family PlayLab," with open-ended activities like banging on African drums, playing house in a pueblo or sorting science specimens in clear blocks. Photo credit: Courtesy Field Museum.

A small girl stands with her face pressed against an aquarium glass as a fish swims directly in front of her, mouth wide open and teeth glaring. "The fishy smiled at me," she gleams. With that fish's homely face, it was more of a snarl. But if a four-year-old girl sees a smile, that's fine. There is nothing fishy about a kid enjoying herself. And there’s loads to enjoy at this 422,000-square-foot facility.

The aquarium debuts its totally renovated, 3-million-gallon Oceanarium this summer, with new digs for the beluga whales, dolphins and other mammals that typically make there home here (they’ve temporarily been moved to partner aquariums). Meanwhile, visitors can take in exhibits like Caribbean Reef, Wild Reef, Amazon Rising and Waters of the World, plus Chicago’s only 4-D theatre.

At the country’s oldest planetarium, kids like to take a virtual trip across the universe while comfortably seated in the ultra-modern Definiti Space Theater. Visitors can then look at the stars the old-fashioned way, with a “clear night sky” projected on the dome of the historic Zeiss planetarium theater.

If you have a daughter or granddaughter under the age of 12 (and she's a girly girl) chances are, you're familiar with the American Girl Dolls. For the uninitiated, these dolls are called by some the anti-Barbies and have names such as Felicity, Josefina, Addy and Samantha. They have ficticious histories and live in momentous American historic settings, including colonial Virginia, the antebellum South and the World War II home front. Here, on Chicago Avenue across from the famed water tower are three floors of dolls and their accessories, from softball uniforms to historical storybooks, for sale.

This is more than a megastore, though. Girls can take photos with their America Girl dolls at the photo studio and have their dolls’ hair done at the salon. Brunch, lunch and afternoon tea are on tap at the cafe, but we enjoyed a dinner with entrees like ricotta cheese ravioli and baked chicken tenders. A borrowed Samantha doll joined us as dinner guest at our table. And yes, there are plenty of brothers and dads in attendance.

So we ask you, what does Orlando have that Chicago doesn't, except perhaps lots of mouse ears?