US Mint, Denver152

I think it is sad that it is so very difficult to be able to take my children to see the U.S. Mint. I has been virtually impossible to schedule a tour and attempting a walk-up tour on our vacation last year just ended in us wasting very valuable vacation hours. My kids are at the perfect age to learn about money from the manufacturing on up, however, this is not possible due to the rules and regulations of the US Mint, Denver. Since we will be coming there again on July 5th, this is the one place that my eight year old really wanted to see, but after trying unsuccessfully to schedule a tour, I guess this will, once again, not be possible.

It makes me sad to think that the US Mint in Denver is a part of our US government. They are doing a poor job of customer relations. We (me, my wife and kids aged 10 and 5, from Salt Lake City) registered and showed up for our tour at 08:00 on Thursday, March 16, 2006. We walked from our hotel to the Mint for the tour. We were prompt. However, as we stepped up to the gate at the tour entrance, the guard, standing on the inside of the fence, closed the gate. He looked at the four of us, walking to the gate, perhaps 10 feet away, and simply closed the gate in front of us. I could have touched the gate as it swung shut, the guard's hand still on the metal gate. I was facing the guard, no more than 12 inches away, as he clicked the lock on the gate and secured it. People who had obviously arrived before us and had been admitted for the tour moments earlier could be seen filing into the building inside the security gate. The guard refused to open the gate, saying that he is instructed to close the gate at 08:00 and will not open it - hence implying that we were late. It seems to me that we were, by definition, not late, since he agreed that he was closing the gate right on time - 08:00, the exact time for which we were registered, and the exact time at which we arrived for the tour. What could we do? My kids agreed that the guy was a complete fool and they were philisophical about it, saying that the poor guy must have some serious ego and security issues to think that this was a fine display of the power that he held over us to act in a capricious manner. So we left. Now, it says clearly on the website for tour registration that walk-up tours are accepted, space available, with a limit of 45 people. We thus went to breakfast and enjoyed a lovely tour of the Denver botanical gardens and returned to the mint at 10:50, hoping to get space on the 11:00 tour. There was a pretty good sized crowd there, hoping for the same thing. We were clearly preceeded by about 20 people, but still, we thought we would stick it out until 11:00 and see what happened. We were then told by the people in the tourist center that the group that had reserved the 11:00 tour had canceled. We thought there should, therefore, be plenty of room on the tour. No, infact, they had decided, therefore, simply not to offer an 11:00 tour. So went our mint tour experience. None of my family was impressed with the US mint in Denver. I grew up in Littleton and went on mint tours as a kid and I would love for my kids to see it. It is a sad day in America when we realize what a botched up government of mindless drones we have. The people running the mint tour operations are obviously lacking in enthusiasm and are just plain pathetic. It also amazes me that in few days since this experience, several of our friends have related similar stories to us. Some have said that the guards held the gate for them for a few minutes to insure that everyone had a chance to get in on the tour, but the majority related stories similar to our experience. It seems that most felt that they were simply at the mercy of apathetic guards and tour guides who showed no interest in assisting the public in having a chance to see the mint. More than one person told us that they were told "no way" when they asked to be admitted as walk-on participants in a tour, space available. My kids took the whole experience in stride and were fascinated by the behavior of the principle guard. They now seem indifferent about returning to the mint on our next visit to Denver. They are keen to return to the botanical garden, however.