Lowell Observatory — Attraction in Flagstaff

On Dec 4, 2024 my spouse and I pondering into this establishment by accident. A friend told me on the way home from our travels as we were traveling through, to stop at the lookout, as this was the best view of Flagstaff. Upon arriving there was no parking and we continued to drive up the hill. Lowell Observatory was on the top.

We decided to check it out as we were genuinely intrigued. It was 8-8:30 and closed soon. Upon walking in, we see a few people in the ticketing line, ok, no problem. We look over the menu options. Gathering the significance of where we are and if it’s worth more time, we’ll make it a part of a future trip. Shortly, I said, a different day for sure to spend more time to embrace this experience than we have, but let’s check out the gift shop before we go. This is where it all went haywire.

We go inside, looked from the right side towards the back left on around. Enjoyed the NASA kids outfits, to cute!! We were the only two customers in the gift shop. Two woman employees were restocking. In the back corner of the gift shop there beholds MOVA Globes. I have one. I’ve never seen them anywhere, only online. I am however missing the three peg base stand and wanted to check it out and the light source. I grab the globe and as I’m holding it like a baby, I am reaching to grab the stand it rests on, a man from behind the ticket counter was approached by one of the two woman that was restocking. He comes flying around the ticket desk to the doorway of the gift shop and yells… (no exaggeration) “PUT THAT DOWN!!!” I said “ok” and I put it back up. Quite confused, as everyone in the lobby and all the staff are staring at us as if I did something wrong. I was mortified!!! I asked, “May I ask why??? He said,”Why what?””Why do I need to put it down?, I did, but why?”He said “BECAUSE I said SO…..!!!” “ok.. but I don’t understand why!” I told him “I own one at home, I wanted to look at the stand it rest on and the light ”I was absolutely insulted to no end, I told my spouse let’s leave….! As I am walking out, I am so upset, nearly to tears, but I’m upset as to why we were just treated like this! That was wrong! I told my spouse I said no. I’m not going to be treated like I did something wrong, embarrassed in front of staff and guest, for doing nothing. This needs to be addressed. I went back inside. I asked to speak to a supervisor. I spoke to an older man. I asked to step aside. I explain the whole situation. I ask why would I be treated like this? I own one of these at home and I was interested in the peg stand, as I don’t have mine displayed like this and this was amazing! He said “he didn’t know why” As well as why did that guy come around ticketing like that and not one of the gift shop employees of there was a problem. There are no signs anywhere that say, “Please don’t touch” “Please don’t handle”, perhaps, “Handle with care”. The MOVA globe was placed on a brightly lite display, above shoulder height, well above a child’s reach so… Appropriately in a gift shop for an adult consumer to see the display of this product, as there were multiple on display, for sale. The supervisor agreed that appropriate signage should be addressed if certain items they don’t want “people” handling!

My apologies to not share this sooner as it’s been a few months. I want to contact the appropriate person, but I see this is a multi-operational business. I will be sending letters of our experience of the complaint for discrimination to us as customers, the store merchandise not labeled, clearly misrepresented, as well as suggested coaching for the employee conduct of three employees, two woman in gift shop, and the main individual a man at the front desk on this date.

I have never been so publicly humiliated that was a public display of insult, disrespect, embarrassment, and truly feel we were discriminated. You have a code of conduct for guests, you should have one for the staff! Be better and shame on them!

End of the fun day we had was ruined for the long trip home on my milestone...

I absolutely loved this and was so glad we came! We were in town for a few days and this was on my list of must-do activities. We bought our tickets online and included the 9:30 planetarium show, it was I think $40 per ticket with that. For what we experienced, learned, and saw, I thought the price was absolutely worth it. We arrived around 7:30ish on a Friday night because we wanted to experience everything else before the show started, and it was pretty busy. Being from Vegas, we didn't plan for the cooler weather at night, so we hit the gift shop first to look for something to cover up with. Pretty pricey in the gift shop, but we ended up getting 2 long-sleeved shirts from their Pluto festival which happened to be on sale for $20 each. I also got a hoodie as a souvenir for my sister and that was I believe $60.

Once we got inside, we explored the room downstairs. There's another room, but it's a kids area. There were a lot of interactive exhibits and we learned so much! It was cool to see so many people there taking in all the cool stuff. We eventually made our way upstairs and looked at the wall of scientists and stuff, read the things about them, and then headed outside to the telescopes. As you walk over, there are different things to read, lit up with reddish light so that it doesn't affect the sky. There were long lines for some of the telescopes, but they moved quickly enough, and we had fun picking out different constellations while we waited.

The people working at the different telescope spots were so friendly, you could tell they loved their job, and had lots of cool facts. After that, we had to make our way to the show, so we skipped about 2 other things we could have done. When we got to the top with about 10 minutes to spare, it was already very full. We found 2 seats together and were so excited to see there were buttons to turn the heaters on in the seats, it was very cold out. The seats lean back pretty far so you can look up into the sky. The lady giving the presentation was funny, super knowledgeable, and we learned sooooo much! I'm proud to say I know how to find the North Star now. This was a wonderful experience, especially coming from a city that is lit up 24/7, so we never really get to see things like this. I think this is something you 100% have to do if you are...

We were disappointed with our experience at the Lowell Observatory. I think it would have been very cool if they had limited the number of people allowed to buy tickets and if it was organized better. We went on a Wednesday evening when there were over 700 people there. We pre-bought tickets online, so we didn’t have to wait nearly as long as the walk-ins, but our entire evening was still spent waiting in line. We were really looking forward to seeing Jupiter, but by the time we waited through the first 30-minute line, they had moved the telescope from Jupiter to something else, saying that Jupiter had already set (it was actually visible above the trees for another 30 minutes). All the telescopes are in the same small space, but instead of waiting in one line to get to them, each telescope had its own snaking, disorganized line, each with an over 20-minute wait time. We had hoped to ask some questions about what we were seeing through the telescopes, but sadly the workers were quite short with us and borderline rude, possibly just overwhelmed with the amount of people in such a small space. They had “star tours” that would have been cool, but they were held a few meters away from the telescope craziness, and the tour guide wasn’t mic’ed, so it was very difficult to hear her. My husband and I kept chuckling because she would tell a story about Greek/Roman mythology and how the star/constellation was named, and frequently follow it up with, “or something like that,” or “I’m not really sure about that,” or something similar. We waited in line for about 45 minutes to look through the Clark telescope (pictured), but we couldn’t really see much. They had it pointed at a star (m-80 I think?) & black hole 55 million light years away and told us it was very blurry, but I kinda wish they’d just pointed it at something more visible that we could enjoy seeing a more detailed view of. The man who was running that telescope kept fussing at people to get in a better line and not to come in the door so fast, but it was so disorganized (and dark, of course), it was hard to know where to go. It is very, very dark there since it’s a dark sky city, and a lot of the paths are uneven, so I wouldn’t recommend going to anyone with difficulty moving around in unknown spaces. Bring a red light flashlight if...