Discovery Place Science — Attraction in Charlotte

My best friend moved from OH to NC and I’m in SC so we met up to have a family day! Our party of people consisted of my best friend, her husband, their 4 month old, mysef, my husband, our 2 daughters (10 & 4), and my best friend’s parents. We spent about 5 hours at Discovery Place. My husband is in a wheelchair and we had no issues with getting handicap parking, the parking garage and entire facility are wheelchair accessible. There were tons of hands on activities for the kids to do. There’s really no rhyme or reason to the layout. It’s all just an open area and you can freely go from one to another. It was a little crowded so we did have to wait for some of the interactive exhibits but not too bad. The rainforest is a great experience and allows you to really immerse into the experience. The rainforest is accessible from the 1st and 2nd floor. The 3rd floor wasn’t the greatest but by the time you get there, you’re wiped out anyways. This is definitely a museum that will take hours so be prepared to make a day of it. By the time we got to the 2nd floor and the kids did all those activities, we didn’t have much time before they closed to do the Top Secret crime section but we did as much as we could do. We went on Saturday 3/4/23 and they opened at like 10:30 and closed at 4:30 and you could easily take up that entire time in there as there is so much for the kids to see and do.

What I was not happy with was the prices of the gift shop. I’m aware prices at museums/tourist attractions are always a little more pricey BUT usually, the prices are still reasonable. My daughter was going to get a sloth stuffed animal and it was a small stuffed animal (approximately 10” in height” and they wanted $41 for it. The super small stuffed animals were $20. That’s insane. Waters are approximately $3.50-$4 per bottled water however, they allow you to bring outside drinks in (from what I could tell) so it may be beneficial (especially if you’re taking kids) to bring a small cooler or book bag with some bottled waters for the day. My best friend bought a stuffed animal, a stress squeeze ball and 3 bead bracelets for $90. The squeeze stress ball exploded about 5 minutes after leaving the gift shop (while we were walking around) and we took it back to the shop and asked if we could get another one and they said “sorry, we don’t do refunds or exchanges”. Considering the museum offers discounted prices for people with WIC and/or EBT, you’d think they’d have a little more affordable prices in their gift shop. My 10 year old decided she wasn’t paying and wasn’t allowing me to pay $41 for a stuffed animal she could get on Amazon for more than 1/2 the price. She did buy a small crystal animal keepsake and it was $11. Aside from that, everything else was great.

If you purchase tickets online, it’s cheaper. For 2 adults and 2 children tickets (purchased online), it was $85 and we parked in the parking garage and paid for parking inside the museum for a discounted rate too ($14 to park all day if you pay inside the museum). We didn’t know it was cheaper to buy tickets online but they have a QR code right by the front door and you can stand to the side and purchase your tickets right there and save $3-4 bucks per ticket that way!

Overall, I’d go again but I’d definitely be more prepared and take our own drinks and not plan to buy anything in...

I hate to leave a review like this but feel others need to be fully informed. I need to make clear that kids generally enjoy the experience regardless. But as the one who paid $92.24 for 2 adults and 2 kids PLUS $17 for 2.5 hours of parking, this is far from worth the value.

We went on a Saturday around 2pm. The first thing I noticed was how trashed the activity stations were. Many stations did not have the materials available to perform the activity sufficiently or completely. Many other interactive exhibits with buttons or knobs were broken and inoperable. The kids expressed a little frustration at one point saying "nothing works". I could see other adults trying to figure out if it was user error or if indeed things were not working. Some instructions were not clear.

They had a fascinating dog exhibit but again, the small track which measured kids running speed to compare against dogs was not working - displaying 'ERR 1'. No pressing of buttons changes that.

They have a couple cool free interactive street exhibits which are fun to stop by and experience - if they are working of course. Which on our day, they were not.

We tried to make the most of it. But discovery place needs to make a major investment to get things back on track or simply make it free.

I would recommend calling before hand to ask about the exhibits fully functioning and going much earlier in the day so you will have more organized and fully stocked activity stations.

Currently cannot recommend. Come on Charlotte, I know you can do...

I went here with my family on a Saturday and it was extremely busy. Both of my sons, ages 1.5 and 4.5, really enjoyed themselves. We were there for a little over 4 hours and it was time well spent.

The hands on exhibits were really nice and educational. Some exhibits were a little more popular than others, so there were lines, which was fine. However, done kids weren’t being supervised so they were skipping the line which was incredibly frustrating for a toddler who was waiting patiently for his turn. Considering some people just let their children run wild with little to no supervision here, it would be nice if some of the more popular exhibits had “attendants” to try and keep things orderly and fair.

There’s an area for little kids specifically, which both of my kids loved and would’ve stayed in for hours had we met them. The second floor had most of the “cool stuff” which we almost missed out on because we didn’t realize we had to take a special elevator to get to it. Would’ve been helpful if the people at the front desk told us that, but fortunately, we discovered it on our own.

The small aquarium was ok even with some of the sea creatures being a bit shy, one of which seemed hungry.

The bathrooms were clean and well stocked. The exhibits were mostly in good condition with the exception of a few that could’ve used some tending to, and it was really fun for my children and I.

I would definitely recommend this to parents with kids of all ages. Even people without kids would enjoy...