Discovery Museum — Attraction in Kerkrade

An amazing museum. A must see. Not even once is enough. My plan once a year. 😊 Specially for schools to do annual tours. In total 5 Stars although challenges that I hope to improve. Most of the information signs are in Dutch and German, not much in English unfortunately. Although in some sections there were 3 languages and wonderful. I didn’t see rubbish bins in the halls. My son saw the Lego photo on the profile and wanted that section but apparently no Lego section exist anymore. Pity. Very interactive. Be ready to spend hours. We were there for 4 hours and still my son wanted to stay and still we didn’t see all parts. Building Has an interesting architecture but I didn’t find any sign mentioning who designed and how long it took to design/build it. Movie In certain times they show movies that we missed. Lack of time. Lab Chemistry lab needs registering on site. Lack of time and we missed it. Didn’t see a staff to ask about age limit et cet. But certainly kids were wearing nice lab coats and all excited in the lab. Cafe nice and has a few good options, though not cheap. Shop has variety of nice games for kids. Quite number of educational games but not cheap unfortunately. 😅 Travel From Aachen Bushof with two buses. Not that bad. One to Kerkrade or Herzogenrath and second one till the museum. Just in front of the museum. Ticket Entrance ticket not cheap. Around 16€ although covers a whole day, 11-5. Free for under 5yo. But pity no discount for students. Wonderful to hear they partner with OecherLab for science camp for schools.

Suggestions: -A Lab for One health, with sections on biodiversity, Showing parasites, a few science art paintings et cet. Showing the relationship of human health, animal health and environment health. Or a big Biology lab with sectors for health, biodiversity… microscopes…

-More of Science communicator staff (with a more visible uniform) walking around and interacting with kids & parents. Am sure museum can use the potential of volunteers (students or scientists) to volunteer as science communicators. Even myself ready to volunteer

-Putting a few chairs around for adults to sit and rest can be useful. You can imagine I had to follow my son for more than 3 hours 😅

-Use volunteers, one myself, to add more English and perhaps plans for future sections.

-Perhaps Stadtaachen can support one direct bus per weekend at least. Am sure many will like this.

-Entrance ticket discount for pupils and students. Or maybe award tickets for schools to encourage...

A mostly interesting museum centered around technology, science and AI. Friendly and helpful staff (most speak English/German besides Dutch). A lot of interactive things to try out.

However there are two major issues I had with this museum. Firstly, all audio stuff was exclusively in Dutch, which I find ridiculous for a museum five minutes from the German border. Atleast offer an English alternative.

Secondly, this museum desperately needs an age limitation especially for its AI section, which was mostly filled with very small children that had zero clue about anything and just wanted to play with things and if that didn't work just smash/rip at stuff. There is a row of old PCs like the original Mac of which half don't work due to smashed keyboards or ripped out cables.

There is also a little café which is appropriately priced. The museum is also very accessible to people with physical disabilities/limitations and the staff members are again very open and helpful here.

All in all, I can recommend visiting with the hint to do so when not many small...

We were harassed by teenagers from a school group that were running wild and going a bit crazy, some kids that were not properly supervised by their school. I was with my young son. It took some time for the museum staff to respond to the situation (and to believe us too I guess). A nice teenage girl from the same school group, who had observed the whole thing, seemed to help us out. I heard her sympathetically say “this isn’t right”. Perhaps she explained the situation to museum staff? Eventually the staff did properly respond to the situation. We really love the museum. We stayed in a hotel near Kerkrade specifically to visit this museum and the Gaia Zoo, which we had visited the day before. Gaia Zoo it must be said handles large crowds quite well. We will try to visit both places again as perhaps this is an isolated and rare situation at the Discovery Museum. I do not usually write reviews, but perhaps it is best to share...