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 their gift shop.