Kayla B.
Yelp
Definitely would not come back. DO come here if you want the equivalent of a giant playplace for children - do NOT come here if you want a fantastic, thorough educational experience. Kids won't notice the lack of science, however, if you just want a simple way to entertain your kids for a few hours.
Pros:
-Decent amounts of chair seating and whatnot for the adults to sit down while the kids play.
-Outdoor and indoor areas. The indoor areas seem to be nicely air conditioned.
-Basically a giant playplace for children. If you have a scientific background, you can probably explain some of these activities to your kids to get a good science lesson out of them. If you don't have a background in that, the lack of information will mean you'll have a hard time explaining some of the science behind things.
Cons:
-This place isn't well-loved. That's the biggest problem with the entire place. All jokes aside, even with the current amount of funding that they do or do-not receive, some decent TLC could turn this place from "meh" to "yay!" as far as a science center goes. A lot of the displays are missing any sort of educational information. I don't expect most parents to know a ton about the science that the particular activity shows, and a small informational panel would go a long way towards helping parents help explain the toys and playthings as "science" instead of just "hey, roll this ball down a chute".
-Bathroom was out of paper towels and one of the sinks didn't work.
-The entire gravity-learning area seems to be based around using pool game balls. These balls seem to be difficult to find. Some of the gravity learning activities seem to be broken as well, so it means that it's pretty difficult to actually figure out what the activity is supposed to show. Some of the displays aren't entirely clear about what they're trying to show, either.
-Most of the tanks in the fish room didn't have the names of the fish or any information about the fish.
-The "Experience a Thunderstorm" activity was this really weird canopy with strobe lights, some lighting sounds through a speaker, bad-smelling fog, and some rain walls. It was....different and honestly more of a joke than a good addition. Anyone who's ever been outside will laugh at it.
-The "Be a Weatherman!" experience requires that you agree to terms that allow the center and the application developers to use your footage however they want for any marketing purposes. Ew.
-ALL of the electronic exhibits were broken in some way or another. The microscope displays in the Nano-room had "Application Has Stopped Functioning" warnings all over it. The Aquarium areas screens both showed that the anti-virus software needed to be updated - which covered up any of the educational aspect that it was supposed to show. The XBox Drawing game tablet wouldn't work at all.
-There were no instructions on how to use some of the displays or the video games they had on display.
-The "be an excavator" exhibit was basically out of sand. There was no "excavating" to be done.
-Alligator tank seems way too small for the alligator that it holds. It's not even as wide as the alligator is.
-The "Feed the Stingray" experience was fun and...maybe? worth the $3. It *could* have been really great, but the employee that was in charge of it said literally 4 sentences - wash the hands beforehand, how much food you get for the ticket you bought, and how to hold the food to give it to the sting rays. There wasn't any particular information about how sting rays or how they exist in the wild, or, well, anything.
Like I said, most of the cons would have been easily fixed with a staff that really cared or some knowledgeable staff that could write up explanations. It's not a *huge* matter of funding.