Thinkery Review

Great place for kids of all ages, they have activities in every room that fit every age

This place is incredible for children, literally, of all ages. An awesome hands on day for fun and learning!

went there for a birthday party. I didn't know it. I wish they let you have the party in the common spaces. so amazing! good to have some time to play around! will definitely go back

So many cool ways for kids to learn and have interactive play. Not all areas are ideal for my infant but there is a smaller child area. Will definitely be back often.

Had a blast, was there 3 hours with a 7&3 yr old :)

This place is great for my almost 3 year old. I would give 5 stars if there were guidelines or suggested teaching models for the different interactive exhibits. Sometimes it is a bit of a free-for-all. I would suggest bringing a change of clothes for your child because they will get wet if using the Currents exhibit.

This place it's good for toddlers not big kids. There is military discount but still expensive and not worth the money. Some activities were okay but most of the activities were crowded. The staff are volunteers and nice. There best activity was the kitchen activity children shop and cook. They have playground for up to 30 months old. As always the parents don't watch their kids and are away from their child/children. The place is also small. My recommendation is if you come make sure you bring extra clothes for your child/children as they have a water current activity.

Very fun to entertain the little ones in the house.

Thinkery is one of those destinations every child should experience as an Austinite. Train table, airplane launch, animation station, dark room for shadow play, large water station, and a ladybug room for the just starting to toddle and crawl. Have a story time at 11am with themes (e.g., being brave). Biggest downside is all of the elementary tours that trample the toddlers and don't wait their turns. In addition, a new pub J.D. Riley's has moved in next door....Wish it would have been more family friendly than have to worry about the crowd that it will bring.

My kids LOVED this place! So much to do & see- and it's all hands on. Not only are your kids learning, but they are having fun while doing it!

Our 5 and 7 year old love it. We go every few months.

What a marvelous place to take a kid or live out your inner kid! There are so many fun things to do here as a kid or even as an adult. So many learning opportunities and fun things to play with: wax, bridges, shadows, water, bright lights, magnets, etc!

Great place to spend a hot summer day. Tickets are $12. And if you park in the garage they charge a $1.00 a hour. If you don't mind the walk you can park down the street and walk in if you use the garage you have to park on the upper levels . They say strollers aren't allowed but there are a few who bring theirs in . It was a nice way to spend the day and you learn something too. You'll spend around 3 hrs or more going through the hands on learning. They do have vending machine for chips etc.

Great children's museum with activities for kids as little as a year or so up to 10+.

High quality, extremely well maintained exhibits. Something for every kid to spend hours on

Creative and so many things to explore! Great time!

Very cool place for future engineers and scientists. Lots of playground spaces for kids to run around. Some restaurants around if you need a snack. Cozy and open area around the block. Parking is easy as well.

Great place for kids but after couple visits .......

Such a fun place for families with young kids! Very hands-on, visual, interactive. There is a section for crawling babies on top floor that is nice if you want to sit and watch them stretch their legs. Older kids can enjoy the water/splash area (they will get wet so bring a spare change). If you are local, they rent out rooms for birthday parties. A good venue when the weather is not agreeable!

The Thinkery is awesome!

They have a free/by donation evening on Wednesday and the is a bus that drops on the main road for just a short walk. It is affordable evening even for a bunch of kids. My kids LOVE the water room and the toddler area.

Come when it opens in the morning because here it is full. Because it is a great place for children from 1 year. I would not go here again with twelve-year-olds. Many opportunities for exploration. Explanations of what the kids experience must come from the adults. Or check the internet for 'lectures' on your visit. They are really good.

One of the best museums for kids, they loved it would definitely visit more often now.

Great Place for kids, can get very crazy on the weekends but they have made updates to make it feel more spacious. All of the exhibits are great to learn and are very fun.

This is a great place. However, the price seems like typical Austin gouging. It's ridiculous.

I took my 13 month old granddaughter on "baby day", a special time for babies and toddlers. It was overwhelming for me as I was totally unfamiliar with the layout, my sis-n-law told me about it - I was visiting from Corpus. But baby girl took over, I let her wander to what piqued her attention. It was nice bc all kiddos were one on one with an adult and no big kids to watch out for in the vast spaces. There were stools available for little ones to reach an activity. Can't wait to go back again!

Friendly staffs. I bring my kids to play here a lot and they love this place. It can be enjoyable for adults too if you can tolerate kids screaming from having so much fun.

I give it 3 star because it's been a few years since I have been here and it has not changed much.. There is many areas that need maintenance and possibly new exhibits. Also the water area on second floor is very out of control more like a splash pad now..The entrance fee is a bit much 2 adults 1 child and it was $42.

Obviously a lot of thought, effort, and care went in to designing a challenging yet fun learning experience for children of all ages. Highly recommend!

Amazing place for kids to learn, explore and have fun. Extremely limited snack/drink options and pricey, but community night gives all income level families the ability to experience

We were part of a 1st grade field trip. Mr Paul was our guide, he did a great job explaining each station to the kids. The ball room was probably thier favorite stop. Can't wait to see the new location when it opens!

We visited while in town from Minnesota. Our 3 year old had an absolute blast if we lived closer we would visit all the time.

From The best places for children!
100% recommendable.

Perfect place to take kids of all ages. There are so many different activities to keep kids busy for hours

Absolutely loved this place whole visiting Austin with two toddlers. What set this place apart from a museum is that it was more focused on experiential play and learnung where as traditional museums feel a lot more textbook in nature.

The favorite activity was the kitchen zone with a farmers market and restaurant counter that the kids loved to cook in!

As always my children's minds were exercised very well. They socialized a little as well.

What a wonderful place for children. There are so many activities and projects for kids to do here and enjoy. Staff always carry a smile and are truely caring people.

The children loved it, learned a lot and very affordable.

Brought our 15mo girl she had a blast. I would avoid going there on weekends though.

Great place for kids and adults! Lots of fun things to check out. The price $14 is well worth it! Only complaint is the process they take for adults without kids that want to come In and explore. Kinda awkward, they keep your ID and make you sign something. Great for keeping kids safe I guess but kinda uncomfortable if you just want to check out the inside. I felt like I learned more things from this museum then I do with most museums! Info on plaques is easy to comprehend and super educational! I really loved this place but prob won t be back since I don t have a child to take in with me. But over all this place is so fun and interactive for the whole family!

Lots of cool things to check out. Lots of activities. Huge out door play areas. Great for kids.

4 stars because it is very cool the first few times you go there. What I've noticed is that each subsequent time we would take our kids there, we would stay for a less amount of time than the previous visit. It seems that the kids kind of lose interest in staying the more they go and would actually prefer to play at the park across the street.

Admission is expensive for the size of the facility.

As an adult I have just as much fun as my son. My son loves the entire place.

So much fun for the kids. Great projects and areas that allow for massive learning interactions. Noteworthy for my daughter, with her autism this place became a gem.

A solid A+ for families with little ones. The only downside is that it's a tad pricey if you aren't going to be there for a while, so plan to be there for more than an hour or else it's just a funtastic pitstop.

My girls love it. That's all that matters. The environment is open, inviting, and captures the hearts and attention of children and parents.

My son (2-1/2) loves going to the Thinkery! We're fortunate to live very close, and have a membership. We usually go during the week from 3:30 to 5:00, and it is seldom busy during that time.

I was disappointed on a recent visit when two older boys (perhaps 8 years old) were behaving roughly in the "Farmers' Market" area, and no staff members intervened to help them play more safely. I guess other parents felt the same as I did, because the area slowly cleared out, until only the two boys -- who were tossing stock pots full of pretend vegetables onto the floor by that time -- remained in the area.

There are also quite a few things about the bathrooms that I'd change if I could. I recognize that the Thinkery has invested effort in trying to make the bathrooms accessible. I just would have made very different choices. I do notice that I'm much less annoyed by the bathrooms than I was before my son was potty-trained, though.

Wonderful location. Lots of great science and exploration opportunities to share with kids of all ages. One of the highlights of our trip.

If you have kids you have got to check this place out

A quite enjoyable establishment. My children were very engaged throughout the day. It was affordable and interesting.

A lot of things for children to do indoors, there is an outdoor area for climbing around on

Kids loved it but lots of kids and kinda just a mess not dirty wise just you know kids leaving things everywhere

The place is great for children. Ours are 8 and 5 years old and they loved it. Plenty of interesting things for them.

My 2 cents on the Thinkery...it's an amazing place for kids and adults. It's fun to watch the little one try new things. However, our son almost always gets sick after bringing him here (maybe unrelated) and it's extremely crowded. They are adding some additional outdoor stuff that may help but who knows.

The new home for the Austin Children's Museum kept my daughters entertained for hours! We started off in the outdoor playground area that had plenty of shade and even a water feature to splash in. Then we went upstairs to the water exhibit, Currents. Come prepared to get wet and have fun. My girls are a little older, so the Kitchen Lab kept them entertained. The Farmers' Market was still just a popular as it was at the old location, but there is more room for kids to play. The free parking in the garage is a huge upgrade!

Great museum for elementary level kids!

It's not a huge place, but the exhibits are very hands-on and engaging, and very well-run. The staff is very nice and helpful too.

There's a toddler-only play section on the second floor which is good for younger children, as well as a water section where the kids can get pretty wet playing with various water toys. The play structure outside is pretty impressive as well.

The family membership is a great value for taking kids back here again and again, and it's also very flexible as you can bring any four kids on a visit, so it's really great for bring kids' friends also.

Amazing!!! We stopped on our way up to Dallas and it was such a cool place! Very clean, staff constantly picking up and SO MANY cool activities for kids (and the young at heart). Highly recommend!!

Is a special , very educational place.
Will be awesome if they sale food inside.

Pretty unique compared to random parks and stuff for kids in the area. Kids loved it! We visited from the Dallas area and added this to our list of fun things to do on a rainy day in Austin.

Was there last week while visiting family. My five year old had a blast. Wish we had something like this in El Paso.

We always come on Wednesday!! She love this place..

I have a 1 and 4 year old and we love visiting the Thinkery. They have plenty to do for a wide range of ages. My one year old loves the Baby Bloomers and the Light Lab. My 4 year old really enjoys the water room upstairs, the rope playground outside and the wind activities in the Spark Shop. Afterwards, we stop at Lick Honest Ice Creams around the corner (SO GOOD).

Tips: Thinkery will validate your parking for the garage around the corner for up to 3 hours! Also, get the annual membership because it's worth EVERY penny!

Its fun, i thought there would be more inside because of how expensive it is.

The play area with climbing structures made of rope was awesome as was Currents, the water themed area upstairs. Great for all age groups, but particularly good for kids aged 3-6.

Great value. Lots of different activities for children of all ages. There's significant capacity at all the areas so that kids can find something to do even when it's extremely crowded. There's also a park outside and some kid-friendly food options nearby. Would definitely get an annual membership if we lived nearby.

Great place for kids to fight and battle over legos, balls, pieces of cloth, water, and glow sticks. In all seriousness, the kids enjoyed themselves and the staff is wonderfully helpful .

Great place to go with kids. Great interactive exhibits that are fun and educational.

Seriously, Austinites have no idea what a children's museum or a science and technology museum should be like. This one is both poorly designed and poorly run. It's very pretty and the "toys" look very cool, but museums are supposed to have order to them. A great science museum, even one for children, manages crowds. It directs people through the museum so that large numbers of people can see and interact with different exhibits without individual exhibits being overrun. I grew up with an Awesome children's museum in Atlanta. It was nothing like this one. There were activities for adults and children to do together, a design that made sense, and encouraged visitors to move around. There is no point in even charging adults admission to this place. You are paying for the privilege of keeping an eye on your own child in a massively overrun playground. Ever been to that really cool playground that has so many kids at it, that no one can really do anything, and your kid wants to leave after 30 minutes. That's The Thinkery. I thought I would be showing my kid giant bubbles, and magnetic dust. Instead, he waited and waited and waited to get to play the water organ, only to have the bigger kids push in front of him. He waited his turn for the light bright and had bigger unsupervised kids yelling in his face, and taking the pegs from him. He was dying to play with the RC cars but it turns out 5 is "underage" and the line was too long anyway (at least there was a real line - the only one I saw during the trip). Who ever heard of 5 being too young for an RC car? This place was a nightmare and a waste of money. Can we please have a real science and technology museum for kids in Austin? Maybe someone who has designed a real museum can build one.

awesome place to be a kid, as things for the smaller kiddos also.

What else do you need to keep your kids entertained in one place... love it...

Wow! An interactive, learning, sensory explosion for children. 2 and under are free, but there is a dedicated play area for that age. Also, the outdoor play area is what I dreamed of as a child. I'm just [redacted] years late for it.

The Thinkery is fun and engaging for multiple ages. Make sure you go during a slow time, as it can get quite crowded. The light lab is my favorite part of the museum. Excellent facility!

Awesome place to take your little ones. Just watch their imagination take off!

Our kid's two and four enjoyed themselves. The light room was neat. And where you shoot the airplanes is cool