Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum — Attraction in Alberta

If you go to this museum and DON'T do the guided tour of the bonebed excavation at Pipestone Creek, then you totally missed out on the best part. If you want an expansive, impressive air-conditioned facility, Tyrell is the place to go. But if you're a true dinosaur fan and want an opportunity to interact with paleontologists working at the site and see the excavation of real fossilized bones up close and personal then you 100% want to be here. Don't get me wrong, I love the Tyrell museum but the guided tour of the excavation site at Pipestone Creek is a totally different kind of experience than you'll get at Tyrell, and I would highly recommend checking it out.

The museum itself is small, but it's very well put together. I wish it was open later in the evening because it takes half a day to drive out from Edmonton, and I would have liked to have caught one of the movies, but the last one started at 4. However, missing a movie in favour of doing the bonebed tour at 3 was the right decision.

It's a 20 minute drive to pipestone creek from the museum, but if you're at the museum in the morning they have a bus that will shuttle you out there for an earlier tour. Coming from Edmonton there was no way we'd have made it in time for the morning tour, so it's unfortunate there's no shuttle service in the afternoon, but we managed to find the site by car without too much issue.

The bonebed tour itself was excellent and was the hilight of the whole trip. Our guide, Becca, was young but very knowledgable and answered all of our questions with enthusiasm. The short hike included 4 or 5 stops where she would provide us with lots of information about dinosaurs, the area, and the history surrounding the site. She carried a large backpack full of various fossils and miscellaneous objects and had plenty of things for people to pass around and inspect at every stop. Finally arriving at the excavation site itself we were pleasantly greeted by the palaeontologists working there who pointed out the various features of what they were extracting as well as answered any questions we had. It was very cool seeing a dozen large bones being extracted from the ground in person.

The hike itself is short and easy but very nice. The vegetation is quite beautiful, and there are wild raspberries as well as wild strawberry plants along the path. Unfortunately all the strawberries had already been picked before we got there, haha. There is also a little bridge that crosses over the creek which is mostly pretty dry in the summer.

If we had drove out to the Philip J Currie museum and only seen the museum it might have been a little disappointing. The facility is very nice but you can get through it in about an hour which makes it hard to justify a 4.5 hour drive. But doing the bonebed tour at the excavation site totally made it worthwhile. Being able to interact with the guide and the workers at the site makes all the difference! If you just want a museum to stroll through, definitely go to Tyrell. But if you want a more personal experience and a chance to ask questions and see the excavation site in person, then coming to the Philip J Currie museum and doing the bonebed tour should...

Pros: amazing exhibits, reasonable price, attached restaurant has great food and service at great prices, the playground is amazing (better for slightly older kids like 5 and up, but good for everyone), well stocked gift shop

Cons: some of the extra tech for exhibits didn't work very well or wasn't really necessary- nothing that took away from the experience though.

This place is truly amazing. It's hard to find a place where everyone is really patient and friendly, all the staff we interacted with left a positive impact. The exhibits are beautiful, the murals and background sounds in the main area give it such great atmosphere. It's got such a great mix of enjoyable visuals, and informational reading and videos. Some of the extras are a bit gimmicky, like the VR viewers, don't really add much to the experience imo, and the touch screens on the upper floor that let you assemble dinosaur skeletons were not very responsive or forgiving so our kids weren't very interested. But the exhibits themselves were so well done, our oldest was more excited than I've ever seen her running around in here taking it all in. The sand pit where they could excavate fossils was a blast for them. Washrooms were all clean and tidy and highly functional. Some older comments mentioned it being too oil and gas centric, but after visiting I can't find any merit to those criticisms. There's a small corner on the bottom floor devoted to some extremely neutral information on the materials and industry, which I thought was perfectly reasonable given how a lot of the local specimens are uncovered and how intertwined the community is with that industry. I never felt like it was propaganda- there were no obvious presented pros and cons, just total neutrality as it should be.

Spent the entire day here and would do so often if we lived closer, don't be fooled by some of the negative nit-picky comments- this place is a must stop if you're...

I would like to score it higher but there are lots of reasons I can't. My wife and I go to any museum possible and when they opened a dinosaur museum just out of town we were ecstatic. It was good enough for your children but as an adult in find it lackluster.

First off its very clean which when rating museums that's the main thing. Especially seeing as there is sand pits for the children to play in.

There are lots of things to see but the exhibits are so run down over half of them are not functional. To say the least I fell bad for them as I know they have been struggling financially for quite some time. They must not have thought of the up keep or maintenance when building this place it would take very qualified person to keep all the electrical moving panels and computers running all the time. The lighting is amazing I have been to many museums where it is to dark and you strain your eyes this one is excelent.

The structure is very cool architectural wise and the playground seemed fun for the kids.

Now the biggest let down is the gift shop. We try to make it out their once a year to take the kids every time I have wanted to buy them a ridiculously over priced t shirt and they just never have stock. They have things in their you can buy from any big box retailer lessening the experience.

The staff look run down and overworked which is sad to see. So hopefully things pick up and people understand the importance of a facility like this for the science community and it can reach its...