Discovery Center of Idaho — Attraction in Boise

I visited The Discovery Center only a handful of times as a kid and when my kids were toddlers (about 6 years ago), we had a membership and came frequently. My little 2 year old loved the circuit board! We haven't been in about 5 years but we came while the mummies were here and I have to say, there seems to be very little left that is actually related to science and learning it. The mummy exhibit seemed to be deliberately creepy, very dark lighting and unnerving background music and my kids just wouldn't go near it to read the information. I read some of the information and none of it that I read was about the science behind mummification. And a lot of the bodies displayed were not true mummies and were just exhumed bodies from other parts of the world - I was actually fairly horrified when I realized that. And I, as an adult, was also very unwilling to view dead bodies looking like jerky as a science exhibition. It's an exhibit for a natural History museum, at best.

There is just no need to devote an entire "Interactive" Science Museum to mainly temporary traveling exhibits that may or may not actually be about science or STEM. Those used to be something special that the Discovery Center hosted not all the time and they were a bigger deal for the whole community when they were a novelty.

What is science about Legos? We can go to the actual Lego store and free-build without paying anything and if we do pay for something, we get to keep the Legos.

What is science about displaying dead bodies with no explanation other than where they were found? Not every dried out, dead body is a mummy. I let my older, young children play in the baby section just to get our money's worth.

Also, this is now a cards-only establishment, which I saw no indication of on the website or on any signage until we were leaving and I deliberately looked to find the single sentence at the bottom of the front door sign.

Just an actual let-down, my children both told me of their own volition that this trip was a "waste of money" and...

I am so incredibly disappointed with the changes they have made! The discovery center was a place our kids always loved going to because it was so interactive and there was so much for them to touch and play with so we were excited to bring our grandson there! This visit was so incredible disappointing though and we were there less than an hour and a half!

The dinosaur exhibit was something we were excited about taking our grandson to because he absolutely LOVES dinosaurs. The exhibit was insanely underwhelming, even for my husband and I, and other than the few interactive parts of the exhibit our 5 year old grandson was so bored he asked to leave.

We literally just walked through the rest of the exhibit and when my grandson kept asking to leave I would tell him “Don’t worry, when we get to the rest of it you’ll have fun” however when we got to the “permanent exhibit” part I was so disappointed! What used to be a completely interactive “world” of science has turned into a lego display/play area. I swear half of the area was filled with cases of completed lego displayed under a plastic case; 1/4 of the area was filled with stuff to read which as an adult would have been interesting but for a kid was very boring and a majority of the rest was filled with different places to build legos.

I’m not sure what happened to The Discovery Center but I am extremely disappointed! It used to be a super cool place to take the kids to but unfortunately we will not be back (especially not at $60 for 3 people after the military discount)! I do not leave a bad review lightly but I am so disappointed that I feel...

I remember visiting this place 25 years ago when I was a kid and wanted to take my kids to it. In my distant memory, I could recall a few things there, but with a quarter century passed I was sure I would not recognize the place. I was wrong. In we walked and all the memories flooded back in. They were good memories, but I was thinking that in 25 years the place should have changed more. The same exhibits are still being used, and some of them are showing their age. A few were basically broken. The facility is also showing some age and probably could use a new coat of paint. Don't get me wrong, we all had a lot of fun together, but after about an hour or so we had pretty much blasted our way through everything and were ready to go. It was pretty busy that day too, so some exhibits were just hard to spend any time with. My kids are younger, so they don't really have the ability to read signs, and I don't think they grasped many of the concepts behind the experiments. A modern museum would probably have videos at each station (or at least a lot of them) explaining what was going on and what to look for in each one. And then comes the price. Our whole family cost $54 to get in and I really feel like it is overpriced for what you get. After we left, we went to the mall and probably had a lot more fun walking around and looking at things, and it didn't cost us a cent. Like I said, we had fun, but I doubt we'll come back again. My kids can come back in 25 years with their kids and probably have the same experience all over again, and the same worn out equipment will...