Danville Science Center — Attraction in Danville

If you are local to the area and have small kids, this place is great! It's a great place to first experience science. It has a small dome planetarium. It uses many shows from the UNC planetarium (which I love). It's easy to come here with not many other visitors around. Which makes it a great place to first discover science. Because we went in a small group and had the small dome planetarium to basically ourselves, my son (who is special needs) was able to sit through his first planetarium experience! At UNC he has only made it through the first five minutes before we have to leave so we don't disrupt everyone else. The center also provides several exhibits that are hands on. Which is a great way to learn and allows for the fun aspect to take over while children don't even know they're learning. However, the things I did not like were several expectations that I thought were not clearly stated and not easily done by children. There is a taxidermy area, I think it is very cool, but you shouldn't advertise it towards children (especially smaller ones). In these areas we were told to walk not run (reasonable), do not touch anything (reasonable but already hard), and to not be loud (maybe reasonable under certain circumstances). However, my point is this, although these things are reasonable to a certain degree. How do you give elementary school aged children free range in this area and you want them to do all of these things at once? It's not realistic. If we all had our own space, like at a desk in a classroom (probably still unreasonable, but that's a different issue) maybe this could have been achieved. Maybe even walk them around in a line, explaining as you go? A little tour of sorts. Keep them interested and engaged in areas where they have such strict limitations on behavior. Just ideas. If you have small children, I would just skip these areas, even if they try to push them on you. The butterfly area is neat. Not like most of the butterfly areas/houses I have been to. The rest of the people I went with were disappointed by it. However, I will tell you why I liked it. This area was outside. It was in a screened in greenhouse type of environment. Most of the ones I have visited are either wet or dry rainforest environments (or something else similar). The other adults I was with thought this to be nothing special and all things you could find in any backyard locally. Yes, they were right, however what I saw was the children's excitement. Not everyone has butterfly bushes and a wide variety of butterflies at their house. They don't all have butterfly boxes where they can watch the caterpillars turn to butterflies. They also don't have the concentration of butterflies that were found in this area. The kids were very excited as the many varieties of butterflies flew around them, landing on them, and just being graceful creatures. I also thought it was a great oppurtunity to not just see tropical exotic butterflies that I am used to seeing at places like this, but to see up close, with not so shy butterflies, the type of variety that we may find at our own homes, at local parks, and at local areas. One of those moments like when someone moves to the area from another country and they have never actually seen a squirrel, deer, or opossum. That moment when we remember how special our own backyard, county, state, and community is! The gift shop is small, but I found it offered a lot of what small children would like, as well as enough different types of science related activities and gifts. The prices in the gift shop were also extremely reasonably priced. I find this is becoming more of a trend in science centers, but even so, I have never seen prices this good. If you gave your child $2, they could leave with a small item or two or possibly three and leave very happy, and with something interesting. Overall, I...

Me and my wife buy a membership on a yearly basis so we can bring our disabled son. Today we decided to take our son because he loves Thomas the train. We like most people start out where you check in at. We then proceeded downstairs only to find that nothing at all has been changed since the last time we came which was almost a year ago. So we proceeded upstairs to the exhibit where again we were met with the same exact stuff again. We thought okay well there doing the Thomas the train exhibit they surely must have Thomas the train stuff at the shop. I mean that’s a no brainer. We were not only wrong but utterly let down as the souvenir shop was almost completely void of anything worth buying. It was the same exact souvenirs in the shop that was there the last time just with a lot less quantity. Okay so surely there doing a Thomas the Train picture in the dome… wrong again. And not only was we wrong again they only do the dome at certain times and only once on Sundays. Any person that buys a membership should be able to go into the dome at any time of day. Shows should be on repeat for the entire day and then changed up the next week. Out of the 3 yearly memberships we have purchased we have only been able to take our son into the dome once. I mean how hard is it to keep something playing? Especially like today; Sunday, when hardly anyone is there. The only positive thing about our trip today was seeing our sons face when we entered the old train station where the Thomas exhibit was. He absolutely loved the Thomas exhibit. I just wish they would have had Thomas the Train souvenirs that we could have bought him before leaving. Our last stop was the butterfly exhibit. As soon as we entered we were met with a sign that read “please do not chase or catch the butterflies”! Okay understood but not even 5 seconds after reading the sign a worker walked up and said the same exact thing. What was weird about this was not only can we read but as we walked in there; there were child butterfly catching nets hanging on the door as we entered. The butterfly exhibit was riddled with wasp and hardly any butterflies beyond the few my wife managed to take a picture of. We just felt so let down by our visit to the Danville Science Center today. I don’t know if we will be purchasing another yearly membership as clearly the proceeds aren’t being used to better the experience. What upset me was even my son got bored after only a few moments of being there and that doesn’t happen easily as everything...

My wife and I share an interest in Science and Walking (and our EV). We decided to do the AVA walk in Danville and to visit the Science Central (affiliated with the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond); the fact of having a Fast Charging station for our EV adjacent to the Science Central was a definite Plus to our decision to visit. We did the walk, had a great lunch, then toured Science Central. It offers a wide range of experiences with a butterfly garden, a dome theatre, a large children's center in the restored train station building, and several exhibits centered on water (as is fitting for a historic river town). We thoroughly enjoyed the interactive exhibits at the center and really had to put on our thinking caps to try the puzzles in the family section. Of special interest was the pinball type exhibit where one literally "Tilts" the unit to score points whereas the original machines would lock up if "tilted" too much. With all of the interactive exhibits this place could entertain children for several hours. We had a wonderfully entertaining Day Trip from our home in the...