Shenandoah Valley Discovery Museum

My son LOVES this place! We'd probably come here every weekend if it wasn't
In Winchester.

There's a rock climbing wall with soft "gravel" bed to land in. The room
With the build-your-own roller coaster (for balls) holds his interest for a long while. There's an art room, Indian village room. And several
Tables with building materials (magnetos, squares, stacking chairs.

There's a medical area - ambulance, crutches, stretcher, etc. a room with nature (books, stuffed animals, loft to climb, real snake, fish).

A wonderful way to spend an afternoon. They stamp your hand so you can go
Out to eat & return. Lots of restaurants (& they have a list in case you need suggestions). At $6 a person, an excellent place for
Kids of all ages!

Spent a couple hours in here with a 15 year old, 10 year old, and 5 year old. All the kids had fun. They had a great time making new friends. Is it me or are kids nicer in Winchester? No drama and no stress from the staff as the kids played hard.

We stopped as a leg stretcher along the Rt 81 corridor. It was a pleasant find and the GPS got us in the general vicinity. The entrance was along a quaint cobblestone sidewalk. Inside, the science center was like a 10lb. science center packed into a 6lb area. You can trip out over 1 delight on the way to encounter another. The rock wall in the rear and the build your own roller-coaster make it worth the stop.

We drove here from Northern VA - full one hour drive. Not crowded at all if you get there at 9am. Place completely cleared out - ZERO PEOPLE - at noon. Call before you go to make sure front door is not broken and that there isn't a field trip.

Enjoyed the laid back atmosphere and SPACE! Much more spacious and less clutter than the Playseum in Bethesda. There is a coupon on the website for $1 off.

The craft room left a lot to be desired. It is a huge room with tables and chairs and sinks but nothing to use except old copier paper. That could of been much cooler.

The Roller Coaster Room was fun, the Indian Room was neat, and the magnet and peg tables kept my kids occupied. I found that most kids that came just wanted to play with the pullies and apples in the front of the place and run around the ramps.

Felt a lot of pressure to clean up after oneself - which is fine - but difficult if there are tons of kids in the place. If your kid is by a mess, they are going to be asked to clean it up, whether they did it or not. Happened to us at the Moon Sand table.

I felt that it really could of been more educational if there were employees or volunteers in some of the rooms to help instruct the kids. They have a sign up that they don't want you to hover over your children because it interferes with play. Really cool for a place only an hour from the city.

Review is with regards to an unfortunate chain of events unlike your establishment that I must bring to your attention. I scheduled an 8th birthday party for my son Nicholas as an overnight celebration for the nights of October 21-October 22 from 6:30 pm-8:30am. As my large family of six, are frequent visitors to the museum I had extremely high hopes for a wonderful party that my son would remember forever. In the past the museum has been a place of wonder and amazement for my four children and myself.
The day of the party is here and I arrived at the museum at 6:30 pm to find the party guests and myself alone. There was not a single representative from the museum to be found. Thirty minutes after 6:30 pm, a middle aged Caucasian female with a thick foreign accent showed up, in a hurry and without an apology and didn't identify herself. I asked her what we should do, and she did not explain anything to me and appeared as if I was an interruption to her evening.
As the night went on, the kids were enjoying themselves until the still unidentified obviously irritated female employee raised her voice at the children, more than once. First of all, this is a party that I paid for and the kids were not misbehaving. If for some reason this employee of the museum had an issue with the children I would have appreciated that she come to myself or my adult companion who joined me for the party. She under no circumstance should have approached those children in any negative manner. In being so abrupt and rude, several of the children cried, and that is completely unacceptable. This employee during the evening, scolded the children for throwing sand (which happened to get on their shoes and appear other places throughout the museum and was never thrown) she even had the gull to take the sand table away and have the children feel as if they did something wrong. I approached her and demanded that she change her attitude and give the sand table back, which she begrudgingly did.
After nagging the children and following them around for more than an hour telling them to pick up their toys, I had enough and told her to stop. She told the entire party that she was going to sleep and "DON'T DESTROY THE MUSEUM" If she wanted the be rude and think that, fine but to put salt in the wound and have that be the last thing she say?
The morning came, it was about 8:00am, and an older Caucasian male employee opened the building, good demeanor. He told the children that they needed to help clean up if they wanted to be "good children". The party children are "good children" and I insisted that they enjoy the last 30 minutes of my son's birthday party. I nicely told the male employee that cleaning up was part of the party package and the kids would not be helping.
Needless to say, my son had a good birthday because I had to fight for it and I shouldn't have to do that. At this moment, we are at a cross roads as to whether we want to continue our relationship with a place we have grown to love. The lack of caring, concern, privacy and respect is appalling.

When these concerns were brought to the attention of the Discovery Museum director he pretty much told me i was lying. I am very upset and this not only because I paid well over $200 dollars for the party, but because their lack of concern to my 8 yo sons feelings. WILL NEVER GO THERE AGAIN A WASTE OF MONEY!!!

Best Childrens Museum in the Washington DC area and worth the drive. Only an hour from Reston via Route 7.

Highlights include:
1) The rollercoaster room where you can customize your own track in a relatively big room.
2) Log cabin that kids can assemble, take apart and then reassemble.
3) Apple picking and harvesting exhibit with conveyer belts and wagon carts.

The only thing I do not like is that the museum schedules birthday parties on the weekends. Other guests are allowed in during the parties, but the facility becomes too crowded.

My kids and I went to this museum, what a wonderful gem! My son loved the front area that had pulleys and levers he could experiment with and my daughter loved the dress up area and ambulance area where she could pretend to be a patient or a doctor. This musuem has tons of rooms with activities. Good solid fun and I wish had had spent more than 1 1/2 hours there!

What a find!!! This place is absolutely the best for curious 3-5 year-olds. There's sooo much for them to do here: blocks, art, science, climbing, reading, experiments, etc. You could easily spend 4 hours here and not exhaust all the activities. Also, since this is Winchester, all parents seemed laid-back with no crazy loudmouths pressuring the kids or controlling the play. My 4-year-old simply loved every minute of his 2-hour visit there and came out of there totally drained (which to me is a good sign that his brain was hard to work trying to grasp all the amazing concepts at work in this place). I'm sure some will claim that the place is small and the equipment is old, but to me those are both advantages. They don't make toys like they used to, and this place doesn't have a single toy post circa-1990.

We've been coming here since before it moved. Old location was MUCH smaller & not as fancy, but it had a cozy charm. The new location is a beautiful building, but it seems like it's mostly the same stuff spread out in a location 4 times as big. A lot of broken stuff on our recent visit-the apple area(very popular) had a broken place, the huge ball rolling contraption by the front door had a broken place, the water tables were weak & how about something to play on the roof? It's pretty up there, but a lot of wasted space otherwise. we were here for 3 hrs so don't get me wrong, the kids loved it, would just like to see more effort. For a place with 4 floors, probably more staff than 1 at the front desk & 1 walking around is needed. We've gone to lots of these places & it's common to have college age kids stationed around to help clean up/pitch in with the kids. I saw 2 girls for 5 min walking around straightening. bathrooms were understandably dirty, high traffic & no sign of being cleaned all day. There were some new things being installed- big climbing/crawling area & full size dino skeleton. Also, if you come during the summer about a block away on the walking mall are play water sprinklers, so bring towels/suits. Tons of restaurants within walking distance & there is lots of parking, just go around the block. Note: closed Monday. I really do recommend this place even though my review sounds negative! Great place to spend a day, they just have some kinks to work out

This place is awesome! I went with my Sunday school kids and their parents. It's an hour drive from Ashburn, VA but it was worth the trip. Do make sure that you call in advance if you are bringing a large group. Making a reservations helps out a lot. Admission is $8 per person but with a large group is $6, from what i was quoted. The people there are really nice, helpful and very cheerful. There are four floors full of activities, kids loved it and so did the adults! I was very happy to have visited, didn't want to leave but everyone got hungry after running around. Totally worth the trip out!