Last Sunday I visited Explorium for the very first time with my Mum and sister. It had only been open 7 days at that stage and was having a “soft-opening”. I’m not actually sure what that is but they are not properly opening all of the exhibits until January some stage.
I have been following Explorium on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram since September 2018. They have made lots of announcements on there and giving us small glimpses of what they have there over the last few months, so I was really looking forward to visiting and trying them out! It didn’t disappoint!
We arrived at 2pm and there was a lot of cars already there. When we went in there was lots of staff at the door to help and Mum had to sign something first (Liability Waiver – Mum) and then we got our wristbands/bracelets to get into the building. The entrance was amazing! I won’t give away too much for those that haven’t been there yet but it was big! To the right hand side of this “big thing” was the Maker Space.
We have been to this sort of thing before at Dublin Maker in the past so recognised it straight away. There was a few people in there already but there was some space for me and my sister and we sat down. They were making cars, check out the gallery below:
This Maker Space is suitable for kids 8 years and over. There was a lot of help in the room and they were very, very patient with us. I’m not used to doing things like this but I really wanted to finish it. Once it was finished, we left it to one side so we could collect it at the end of our visit!
Afterwards we went up the escalator to look around the rest of the museum and entered a corridor of things to pull, push, swing and explore. One thing we all kept saying to each other was how many things we could keep getting our hands on!
As we were going through this floor we did find a couple things that hadn’t opened yet. They looked really good but were blocked off at the time, so we will definitely have to go back to try it out another time! Off to one side up there is “Movie World”. It is everything you want to know about creating a movie! It shows you storyboarding, filming, special affects and editing.
We actually met up with Mark Langtry of Let’s Find Out who also works at Explorium and we had a fabulous time doing a “movie” together.
There was also a large area upstairs dedicated to “movement”. What I mean is, that everything you did up there meant you had to move yourself or you watched something move! It was so different from other places we have visited in the past. We were able to move everything ourselves, like these cars and we raced them afterwards too:
There was an upside down room, we learned about perspective, an area using your senses and so much more!
We did think about doing a review on a lot more there but to be honest there was so much and it’s not all completely revealed yet. I thought we would wait for the other sections to open before completing this review.
We also tried the multi-sports simulator too in the separate area away from the general museum. Unfortunately myself and Megan are too young at the moment to do all of the challenges and you need to book early for the caving and the climbing (we hadn’t!) so we couldn’t do those. We bought credit at Explorium (but you can buy it online) and it was stored on our wristbands and then we could use it as we wished for all our VR and simulator experiences!
Me and my sister did do the football scoring simulation though! We eventually left at closing time and we still hadn’t done everything properly! Altogether we were there 4 hours and left tired but happy. It was definitely a big place and they still have a few more things to come. I loved it and would recommend it for any and all kids that have a passion in sport and science!
Make sure you check out all my other videos about my experiences here and at other places I have visited and reviewed in my Youtube Channel. Never miss a blog and make sure you subscribe!
