Earth Sciences Museum — Attraction in Waterloo

This is going to be a negative review, so I will start off on a positive note.

I liked the trilobites. I was also impressed by the variety of crystals and the mine shaft. It was nice that there was no entrance fee. However...that does not mean your visit is free. They charge for parking.

That being said; I started the day stressed out and decided to spend a nice relaxing day at a museum I had not visited before. Unfortunately I ended my visit to the museum far more stressed out and disappointed than I was when I started.

So, lets list the problems....

1. This is not an actual museum.

If you randomly google museums, see this, briefly scan the website and think you are going to a museum (as per the traditional sense of the word). You are not. This is not a normal museum. It is a series of hallways inside a random university building that contain displays interspersed between a University coffee shop and class rooms. It took me 20 minutes to look at everything I could find.

2. Parking:

Some parking lots charge $15. Some $5. Some will apparently get you towed. I only know this from talking to someone with the 'parking' department on the telephone, because there are otherwise ZERO signs telling you which lots charge what, which are for faculty and which are for anyone. There are also NO signs whatsoever identifying the lots. The website tells you to park in lots HV or C. Unless you have a map of the campus with you, you can't tell which lots are HV and which are C as there are no signs identifying them.

3. Building signage:

The signs on the buildings are so small they might as well not be there. Not kidding. I was given directions to the 'museum' using landmarks and building shape ("the library is the big cube. Its near that") as there are no visible signs until you're right at the front door.

3a) Speaking of signs; you cannot be faulted for thinking the Earth Sciences Museum would be in the Earth Sciences building. It is not. For some reason it is instead located in the Environmental Information Technology building.

4. Displays

The signage at the museum itself is also terrible on some displays. I have 20/20 vision and even I could not see well enough to read the descriptions of some displays that are in tiny font and located in weird places, such as on the floor, or below waist level.

I have included photos below as examples of the poor and absent signage.

If they were to improve signage on the campus, improve the displays and make it very clear on their website that this isn't a traditional museum so you do not go there expecting something completely different...I will...

Well my daughter and I found a rock and was told to drop in to the muesum and get it looked at. The university grounds is beautiful, and my daughter loved it. When we entered the building my daughter seen a lady leaving an office and was excited about the rock and approached her to see if she was able to help. It happened to be the curater of the Muesum. She was beyond helpful and went way beyond what we expected and showed us around. As well helped find our lost keys.

The Muesum is clean and beautifully laid out, and the mine setup in the basement was very interesting. We had a great day and so I took my father in law with me today to see. He also enjoyed it and again had a wonderful day.

Looking forward to seeing the results on the rock. But most definitely will be going back to...

We stopped by to see this museum during our stay in Waterloo. The university campus was quite nice and parking is only $5. I found the exhibit a bit lacking as many of the display cases had burnt out lights, scratched acrylic or weird setups. In many situations it was difficult to see the items on display clearly and crisply.

You can tell a lot of love and care was put into the exhibit, and it does spread across 3 floors. Ultimately it is rather forgettable if you've seen a rock and gem display before. The dinosaur exhibit is relatively smaller and to my knowledge most are replicas.

Not a bad way to spend some time but if the costs were any higher or it was busy I wouldn't recommend visiting. For reference I am comparing this against the Royal Tyrell / The Glenbow...