The Santa Cruz Children’s Museum of Discovery — Attraction in Capitola

This place is absolutely wonderful. It's super clean (they switched out sanitized toys while we were there) and the people are so nice! The exhibits are fantastic - the topology/watershed mapping exhibit is really neat, and the rags through the pipes exhibit kept my 3 year old entertained for a solid 1/2 hour (as did the huge Brio train track setup). We were there 3 hours, and the kids want to go back because there is still more to do. The people who run this are also exceptionally kind - they heard us talking about the Thomas fire in Santa Barbara, which is why we were in Santa Cruz, and they gave us a set of free passes to help us entertain our kids while we were away from home. Wonderful place,...

Pros: Want your kids to learn and play, well this is the right place to take them. They have a wide variety of hands on activities for kids of all ages. Even though there are many kids the place stays fairly clean. They host open house events and distribute free annual passes through other organizations.

Cons: It can get crowed once in a while, and when it does kids can get out of nad. Parents are suppose to stay with their children but I have noticed parents leaving their...

I take my grandkids here often. They love this place. Lots of things for them to do and explore. Great place to go on rainy day week ends. My only concern is some parents treat this place as a babysitting service and don't monitor their child. I've seen kids playing tag, knocking down other kids, bumping into exhibits, and the staff just stands there or looks the other way. Lets all play safe and...