Museum at Prairiefire — Attraction in Overland Park

This is a wonderful little museum in Overland Park. The facade is stunning; pictures don’t do the colorful glass justice.

When you enter, there is a T-rex and other fossils. Upstairs is the children’s Discovery Room with various interactive stations. Each station was a different science theme which included Anthropology, Vertebrate/Invertebrate Zoology, Geology, Paleontology, Astronomy, etc.

The Astronomy room was underwhelming. I don’t know if they’re working on it or not, but the only cool part was getting to smell a moon rock. In the Geology section, there was a big cabinet full of rocks/minerals/glass that should glow under black light, but the lightbulbs were missing so the display was off.

My favorite area were the Zoology areas. They have a lot of live stick bugs (I don’t recall the correct terminology) and hissing cockroaches. There are poison dart frogs, a pair of degu, a chinchilla, a corn snake, a tarantula, and so many other cute critters and insects.

My kids loved the Dino Dig and the Cabinets of Curiosity. I wish there was more variety in the cabinet drawers. A lot of the items were really similar.

I believe the museum also had a VR room and a baseball room downstairs, but we didn’t notice them until we were leaving. You can also explore outdoors, but it was way too hot to be out on the day that we were there so I can’t speak to that.

There is free parking in a parking garage across the street from the museum entrance.

This was a POGO Pass admission for us, but it is otherwise five...

It was fun but the layout was confusing. There were a lot of hallways that just led to a dead ends with just classrooms. It was all free, which was cool! We finally figured out that upstairs is only a large room they call the discovery room. It's half the floor and inside there are different areas of science you can visit. The paleontologists had fosss you had to dust with a perfectly fluffed out paint brush. The astronomy room was neat as well! Smell the moon. You won't regret it! The invertebrate zoology se tion had a hissing cockroach, hermit crabs, and the likes in display cases. The vertibrate station had some chinchilla, a rat, a dedu and a bearded dragon that was hanging out with the kid that orked the entrance. He sat behind a desk and greeted people. Also, thry have a scavenger Hunt. I head other parents playing and went to the front desk where the kid and bearded dragon were and got one from the flyers and brochure section. Then I had to try and use a crayon in the sensory area. My daughter said no and I no longer had a writing utensil, 🤣. She was not interested In getting a prize I guess. The first floor had a huge T-Rex skeleton! It was awesome. We spent about 1 to 2 hours there. I think if my 3 year old were olderp it may have been a little bit longer and fun. She bounced from area to area very quickly and then wanted to get popcorn and leave. If the weather were nice, I would have liked to gone back and explored their weands and...

We had a wonderful time and our grandchildren did as well, unfortunately until we came to the 2 turtles, they are inadequately housed. The box turtle should be in a larger aquarium and I forget the name of the other turtle which is about 12" being house in about a 15 gallon tank, It is cruel for him, he barely has room to turn around. If you are going to house animals they must be housed in an environment to which they are accustomed. Both of these turtles are being housed improperly and especially the large one is really very cruel. I will share my experience with the proper managers and with an agency that can evaluate the turtles environment. We were told that in less than 1 month we were the 3 rd people to share this with staff. And yet the turtles are still being housed improperly. I expected more from this museum for animal care. and will not return unless these...