SPARKOH! — Attraction in Frameries

Visited with my children (5 and 7) during the carnival holidays this year, but the visit was quite disappointing. Sadly many of the interactive exhibits were broken, frankly too many for the high price being charged. I understand it's difficult to operate an interactive technical museum, but attention needs to be paid to maintenance.

Sadly this only lead to frustration with the children as the whole point of showing practical experiments is to help illustrate technical concepts, but it falls flat if you're stuck trying to explain "well, what SHOULD have happened is..." each time.

One example is the computer programming exhibit with the magnets is an excellent idea. The implementation is poor and slow, and even then one of the steps refuses to execute properly despite being recognised by the camera-vision system.

Another example is the "build a rocket" which requires you to physically assemble rocket stages, then test it to see if it is too heavy, unbalanced, or aerodynamically incorrect, however several of the parts are not correctly recognised making it another impossible to solve problem, providing no gratification for the children when they actually have solved the problem.

There are some exhibits which are dangerous. Around the large plasma ball, there is some exposed metal which is grounded, however if you are touching this and the ball at the same time, the high voltage will give a shock, which surprised my kids who both managed to touch the bare metal and the plasma ball. That's not great - the area around there should be covered in an insulating material to avoid shocks.

Some exhibits were a underwhelming - experiencing full force wind for example gives gusts gentler than the windstorms we've been having recently!

There are some factual problems with the exhibits too. One exhibit you can jump on (which was partially working, if you jump in the right places) promises that we can (and perhaps will) generate electricity from people walking on the pavement, yet the experiment directly shows that to generate a few watts you must have a bunch of kids with a sugar-high jump frantically on it. The cost of installing such a thing and maintaining it in a public space to generate less power than a fart is so cost prohibitive, it's misinformation to say it's a practical form of electricity generation.

Some of the body exhibits were interesting, although several of the preserved parts are decaying, probably from the heat from the lighting, making it harder to see how they should look. I was disappointed that in such a new exhibit for the body where they discuss the chromosomes they missed an opportunity to talk about intersex people, as it's not just male and female in the real world.

The location is excellent, in a former coal mine, and the exhibit explaining how the coal mine worked was working well, and extremely thorough, that my son got totally lost listening to all the explanations.

The playground was also excellent, interesting, and employs equipment designed to encourage creative physical movement, which is nice.

I think the museum has some great areas, but there are some areas that are such a let down to museum as a whole. The inclusion of English, French and Dutch everywhere is lovely, and the curation seems to be on point, but I think maintenance is lacking.

We ran out of time and didn't see the biodiversity garden, couldn't find the indoor ropes course or several of the things advertised on the website, got lost upstairs at one point because of weird signage and apart from at the entrance and at the cafeteria, we didn't actually...

We visited on a Tuesday and it was a fantastic experience. We purchased tickets online and were greeted by a kind young lady who offered a map. We spent a little over 3 hours at the museum and the kids wanted to keep going. Most things were labeled in three languages, so as primarily English speakers it was pleasant to be able to read the science behind the displays. I do think we missed an entire section somehow since some of the things we were looking forward to we didn’t encounter. The cafe food was delicious, but we did have a bit of trouble communicating our order- a small menu we could point to might be helpful for future guests (not expected in another country, but might be helpful!). None of the workshops were open, but I can understand why with how quiet it was. Overall it was a...

absolutely amazing place for a family with children, free parking in front of the entrance, great admission fee is definitely worthwhile, a realy huge complex full of amazing scientific experiments, certainly the most scientific attractions in one place I've ever seen, we were there for 4 hours but that's not enough to see everything, there is even the 4d cinema inside, large restaurant with English speaking personnel, they have very big outdoor playground for kids and a cute small garden, this is just a great and lovely place for whole family, we will definitely come back, cons: no English translations on some...