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Museum of Life and Science
Rating Details »
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
5 reviews for Museum of Life and Science
The Durham Museum of Life and Science really is a great destination. It is in a neighborhood in the middle of Durham on a fairly large number of acres with a bit of buffer from the neighbors. There is a good deal of free parking on site, though you may need to go to the overflow lot across the street.
Although you would think the main attractions are inside the main building, I found that most of the cool stuff is elsewhere. Start at the Loblolly Park, which is a great outdoor playground. It includes not only climbing things. but drums to play, a water area with hand-operated pumps, a full-size train caboose. Things are a bit weathered, but they still work. Keep walking and there is a small farmyard with a few animals you can watch, or pet if they are within reach.
One of my favorite places was the butterfly house and insectarium. The butterfly house is a tropical area that really is full of butterflys. The insectarium has a variety of live bugs instead of dead ones. Even some of the spiders had real webs on the ceiling outside the display case.
The dinosaur walk was fun to see life-size models in a natural habitat, but the best part was the fossil dig at the end. They trucked in a lot of fill from a mine, and they had shovels and sieves to look for real fossils. All my kids walked away with either shells or shark teeth.
There are a lot of displays outdoors and a long way to walk, we didn't make it all the way. In the overflow parking lot there is a large metal dome where we ate a picnic lunch and listened to the echo bouncing around.
The displays inside are fun, I wouldn't call them forgettable as another reviewer did. My favorite is the Keva Planks. Think of Lincoln Logs but rectangular. You can build towers then knock them down. There usually is a structure there that some talented person built earlier in the day. Make your way through the rest of the science displays, touching and having fun as you go. Some things are more fun than others, but you won't be bored or disappointed.
Look ahead at the web site and see if there are any days with special activities you might be interested in. Some of them can be quite good. Last year there was a day with movie stuntmen demonstrations, highlighted with them jumping 3 stories off the roof into a large inflated pillow.
Our family spent about 5 hours at this museum on our trip yesterday. Do be aware of the closing time, which was earlier than I expected, 5pm. Admission was $12.50 per adult, $9.50 per child. It's a bit pricey, but make a day of it, it is a lot of fun. After going to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia a month ago, it's a bit of an unfair comparison, but I would give the Durham museum 4.5 stars on a NC scale.
If you live in Durham and have kids, you simply must have a membership to the MLS. If you are visiting and want to give your kids something to do for a morning, you could do much worse.
The museum has a huge amount of stuff to do. The permanent exhibits in the inner building are largely forgettable (the NC wildlife and weather ones excepted), but there's a great playground. The real attractions lie beyond the main building. In addition to a fantastic outdoor playground, there is a sound garden, areas for playing in water, a hobby farm, a wildlife exhibit, and of course the butterfly house. At the moment there is a new dinosaur exhibit in the works that I hope will be good, and there are generally some fairly interesting weekend events ever month or so.
What a crazy place.
The Museum of Life and Science has definitely declined since its glory days back in the mid-90s. Even so, it's still the coolest museum in the Triangle, and probably the coolest in the state.
The huge exhibit hall (which I think of as new, because the whole museum was across the street in an old ugly corrugated metal building when I started going there) houses several big exhibits on things like The Human Anatomy, Space Travel, and World Weather Systems. Everything is interactive to some degree, and there's a lot of computer simulations and crazy machines to play with.
They even have a little zoology exhibit with live animals in an indoor artificial habitat.
The coolest part of this museum used to be the dinosaur walk with - supposedly - lifesize models of dinosaurs. When the new buildings opened across the street, they sort of abandoned the dinosaurs and the forest reclaimed them... but they didn't tear them down, so for a long time there were these huge replicas of dinosaurs lurking in the woods along a semi-abandoned walking path. It was really creepy and wonderful.
I agree that it's hard to believe this place is in a town the size of Durham. Tucked away in a somewhat random neighborhood location, the Museum of Life and Science spans acres and acres. Main features:
-indoor museum with exhibits on weather, space travel, sound, and the like
-butterfly house (they may come land on your shoulder) and insectarium (they will not land on your shoulder, thank goodness they are behind glass)
-farm animals
-playground
-train ride
-long nature trail featuring bears, lemurs, and wolves as well as an exhibit on wind
My husband and I were the only people we saw there without chillins. The entrance fee was a little pricey (~$10 for adults), but certainly worth it given the caliber of the facilities.
This place is awesome for kids.
Wow - I always thought of Raleigh as the place for the big state museums, but the outdoor exhibits here really give this place an edge. It's hard to believe you're in the middle of Durham when you're walking on the "In the Wild" trail and visiting the bear, lemur, and wolf habitats. Other outdoor attractions include the butterfly house, the farmyard (wild animals are swell, but donkeys are really cute, too...), and a really impressive playground - how do parents ever get their kids to go home? Inside, you'll find exhibits on weather, geology, and a pretty cool space section. I haven't taken the train ride, but I'm curious about the previous poster's mention of lions...definitely didn't see or hear anything promising lion viewing. Maybe I missed something? Anyway, it's a very fun place, and I believe there are some plans for a dinosaur exhibit in the near future.
