Turtle Bay Exploration Park — Attraction in Redding

I really didn't want to have to leave this as it was you but considering I have had no response to my email I am leaving it as a review just so people can be aware. My family and I visited turtle Bay on October 26th at about 2:00 p.m. I am a member. My sister and her kids have been members. It's something that we enjoy doing with our family or at least we did. Enjoy with our kids. Our aunt came to visit from out of town and she always stays at the hotel next door so we figured it would be a good place to meet up and do something with the kids as normal. We started in the museum and then we stumbled into the mind Bender Mansion exhibit that was going on. I guess there was a couple of exhibits that were broken as I was trying to explain that to the children in the group. A very rude young lady came up and started to go on a rant about how the exhibits are broken because people don't know how to watch their children and that kids just do whatever they want nowadays and they're so rough on everything. She goes on about how they're so rough and they stomp things and parents don't care because they don't even pay attention. I tried to politely say you know it's awful when one person ruins something for the group and kind of end the conversation but she continued to go on about it to the point where I just walked away. A few minutes later we walked over to another exhibit that was broken and as I was trying to explain to my son what it was for, she walked back over and very aggressively inserted herself into our conversation to drive home the fact that it needed to be handled"VERY GENTLY". Which I hadn't even had a chance to go in to what it was at that point At this point it was very obvious that she did not want us in the room. I don't know at what point. It seemed like my children were going to cause any damage or why she sought us out to go on her tirade, but at that point I gathered my children and left the room. It was so blatantly obvious that we weren't wanted there and she had negative feelings about us that as we walked out, my 3-year-old son tells me "I wasn't going to break it Mom." That's the feelings that we were left with after our last visit to Turtle Bay. I pay a membership fee to have somewhere to take my child where he can learn and be interactive and have a safe space and that's how we're made to feel. What is sad is I was discussing the situation with my friend who said that she had a very similar situation with the staff during the dinosaur exhibit and that was what led to her not renewing her membership last month. Which means it wasn't a one-time occurrence or somebody having an off day. It means that there's employees there who genuinely have a distaste for children enough so that they make an environment that's designed for kids. Such a toxic place that people don't want to take their children there and that is an issue. What's unfortunate is I tried to email to talk to somebody about the situation and received no response. So here I am having to leave a review in the hopes that somebody there sees it and realizes that there's something going on that needs to...

I was a bit disappointed with this place. Changed my work schedule and drove 2 hours just to see the King Tut exhibit. I was expecting to spend at least an hour in there and had planned my entire day around it. It was so small, and they wouldn't even let me take any pictures. I don't understand why, since these are only replicas, and even the museum in Cairo allows photography now. Very disappointing. I would've been better off just buying a plane ticket to see the originals.

The place also isn't very organized. We thought that the gardens also opened at 10 and required admission. Had we known that the gardens opened at 7:00 AM and were free, we would have gotten there earlier to beat the heat. The place was so confusing, as there were paths all over the place, some of them didn't even look official. The so called "farmers market" was basically a row of thrift vendors, and when it came time to buy the tickets, there were no signs indicating which counter we buy the tickets from, and there were people standing all over the place and there was nothing resembling a line. We actually ended up walking through part of the museum for free, before we finally figured out where to buy tickets. They really need to develop a better system, especially on busy weekends.

All that being said, you're basically paying $16 to see a bunch of caged animals, replicas and little kids' stuff. The Sundial Bridge, Gardens and Aquarium were the only parts of the park worth seeing. Maybe for kids it is good, but for adults, it has...

I let my assumption of it using the word turtle…that I would see more then 2.

Is this a cool thing to do with kids, yes.

Should you spend 4 hours here for your moneys worth, yes.

The cost is around the same amount I would pay for a zoo with 2x the animals. So I do think the price is a bit stiff.

The building itself didn’t have much animal wise to see. Thus assuming that’s the museum part? But it’s called Exploration park? Which the park (play grounds) is attached to the museum an only accessible via museum tickets. So it shouldn’t show up as a separate google maps pin an parents assume it’s just a park to go to.

That being said. The staff were all wonderful.

The animal show was cool. We loved that they walked the animals close by. Highly recommend if your child can sit for 35 mins an not move nor eat.

Bathrooms, ✔️

There are two play areas an unfortunately people do not know how to read signs. There was a family with larger teens throwing water bottles an jumping in the toddler baby section with their parents. Leaving the area unfortunately unsafe to let the little kids explore safety. There needs to either be a larger more obvious sign or a staff member.

The parrot feeding was super cool. Respect the staff an what they say. If you know your kids can’t handle direction don’t set them up for failure an walk them inside.

The map they give makes it seem like it’s massive an large when it’s really small an the font is hard to read. We missed tons due to time an unsure of...