miSci The Museum of Innovation and Science

My 7 year old, my 55 year old mother and I visited MiSci on Sunday and had a great time! The 2 shows we went to were really good. The museum was very hands on and informative. It was fun to learn as we played.

We were in the area and needed something on a potentially rainy day – it is small and the exhibits we saw were traveling exhibits so my guess is that if they have an exhibit that really speaks to you then you’re all set. It was a nice way to spend a nice few hours in the afternoon. I wish I could say more and it’s probably a really great asset to the neighborhood (is the neighborhood coming or going? We couldn’t figure that out) Planetarium was nice but again small

A lot has changed since the last time I wrote a review of miSci. In a nutshell it’s become a «must go to» place in the Capital Region, IMHO. My wife and I have brought our two daughters (ages 5 and 10) to the museum numerous times since my last review in the summer of 2012, and in that time we’ve all been blown away with the awesome exhibits, events and education opportunities miSci now provides. Some of the things we’ve seen at miSci over the last few years include:
1. a fantastic Dinosaur exhibit (this exhibit was so popular, the museum was mobbed ALL SUMMER)
2. real, live butterflies in their indoor butterfly house
3. the annual Trains and Toys holiday show, which has gotten better thanks to the inclusion of an indoor science play-​space (which includes a really cool water table)
4. Grossology — the impolite science of the human body (this was prob my daughters’ favorite exhibit so far)
5. a Massive weekend-​long Science Festival (where my 10 year old got to hold a huge Madagascar Hissing Cockroach, among other things)
6. Three different amazing exhibits on loan from the San Francisco Exploratorium: «Seeing» (which focuses on visual perception), «Notion of Motion», and «Making Sense of Sound». This summer they will be getting a new set of interactive exhibits called «Earth Exposed: Discover Our Planet’s Hidden Secrets»
7. both my daughters participated in STEM workshops over the winter and spring breaks, and they both LOVED the classes!
8. the planetarium has been renovated (nice new, comfy seats) and a cutting edge digital projection system complements their cutting Goto Star Machine.
So, if you haven’t been to the museum in the last couple of years, do yourself a favor and plan a visit now. You won’t be disappointed.

I’ve been to the Schenectady Museum (now MiSci as previously mentioned) several times over my life and have usually been underwhelmed. It’s old, it’s got a ton of boring stuff about GE, and it’s in a sketchy neighborhood. Why three stars then? Because it is improving, and I think it has a lot of potential for even greater improvement.
I’ve been twice in the past year and the second visit with the Notions of Motions, and the Dinosaurs are a vast improvement over past visits. They got to touch and manipulate all sorts of things and what kid doesn’t love a moving dinosaur! My kids (6 and 8) really enjoyed themselves and want to return.
We invested in a family membership ($ 80) so we can drop in anytime and meander around and explore the exhibits more. Who knows maybe with one of visits they’ll even start looking at the GE stuff. The membership also grants you ASTC passport privileges as well as well as Empire State Museum privileges. One family trip to a couple Boston museums and our membership cost has been more than covered.

Note: this is now known as the miSci Museum of Science and Innovation, a fact I have noted to the Unilocal editors several times without much success in getting it updated. Website is

Updating review for current exhibits and extended summer hours, which are:
Monday — Saturday 9 – 5 and Sunday 12 – 5
When school goes back in session it will be back to Thursday-​Friday 12 – 5, Saturday 11 – 5, and Sunday 12 – 5.
They now have two «traveling» exhibits recently (June 2013) opened. The first is «Notion of Motion» which we saw at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, where it was much bigger than it is here, but which has lots of cool little hands-​on activities that basically cover nifty aspects of Newtonian mechanics. Blow vapor rings, play with bicycle chains to learn about wave forms, spin balls down vortices, etc. This one runs through June of 2014. The other one is «Dinosaurs», a summer exhibit through September 2013, which consists entirely of six robotic /​animatronic dinosaur tableaux scattered throughout the museum. This was a little scary for the little ones (one shows four deinonychus in a pack bloodily killing their prey) but cool, still, the whole «dinosaurs» exhibit was really just that with a few extras like digging fake dinosaur bones out of a pit of recycled rubber chips. Not exactly a barn burner.
Both of these «traveling» exhibits are basically just crammed into the existing space, in front of the older exhibits or shoehorned in to odd spaces.
As ever (see previous reviews) they’re trying hard at miSci but the educational content is still quite limited and the circular nature of the museum with its heavy legacy of GE Infoganda really limits this as a science museum, and it’s not really entertaining enough to be just a kids museum at $ 6.50 a pop for kids and $ 9.50 per adult, with the planetarium shows $ 5 per head extra. (Disclaimer: we went ahead and sprung for the family pass, $ 80 for a year, in part because they have reciprocal membership privileges at a number of the other minor league upstate museums between Troy and Buffalo. We only need to go three times to ‘break even’.)
No dining facility except for a drink cooler and a snack vending machine in the limited gift shop, and as ever the parking here is rather limited (they stuck with the circle motif in the parking lot to echo the 1970s architecture of the building.)

3.5 stars.
I have absolutely no interest in the «museum» part but I do love the planetarium. I have a thing for planetariums and find them so relaxing (because I love star gazing IRL but I hate bugs… planetarium = bug problem solved).
Teenagers do not like the planetarium or so my «Little Sister» told me. I enjoyed it so I guess the age demographic is kids 10 and under and lame 30-​somethings.
At Christmastime they had this cool program on the «North Star». Interesting check it out.
I did stroll around the «museum» and it was terrible, busted, and overrun by unruly unsupervised children. There is lots of busted stuff to touch but I didn’t want to catch any «kid germs» so I just admired from afar.

When we first moved to the area and discovered there was a tech museum in downtown Schenectady, we bought a family membership immediately. It came with a ticket to the planetarium so we hustled off to see the show. This was a couple years back, but I recall being unimpressed. The narrative was something about identify the constellations and man’s relationship with the stars over the ages, not the educational discovery you get with a good planetarium show. The room itself was a bit shabby and you could see the seams in the ceiling.
Outside, we noticed this was really the General Electric Museum. All the displays are related to technology developed at GE or otherwise electricity-​focused. Not enough are interactive and many of the interactive ones weren’t working. We didn’t go back and allowed the goodie from our expensive family membership to lapse.
I’ve returned a few times over the years with youth groups and have been disappointed each time. The exhibits don’t change very much at all. They have various special attractions from time to time that seem tacked-​on; right now there’s a big model train in the lobby. The last time we went I took two boys down for an amateur radio day when were we supposed to be able to talk to other kids around the world. It turned out to be open house at the ham radio room downstairs and we waited in line to talk to an old fart in Albany pretending to be a kid.
I may sound like a sourpuss – museums are a good thing, right? But they charge a good buck for admission and you don’t get your educational or entertainment dollar’s worth. GE should be supporting this place hugely; right now it’s a negative on their reputation instead of a plus.
Maybe your experience will be different. There’s a low-​risk way to check it out: right now admission is free from 11 to noon on Sundays. (Call before you go to be sure this offer is still in effect.) If you like what you see, you can buy your own family membership.

Although the exhibits are few, this place also has an astounding planetarium that offers a few shows each weekend and a few shows during most weekdays. The museum houses multiple items that showcase some of the rich history that makes up the city of Schenectady. Although I wasn’t quite amused at the amount of exhibits, one of their better exhibits features people generating electricity, one of the few hands-​on exhibits available.
Nothing was marked with any signage, anywheres in the museum, and the positions of each of the items seemed randomly placed.
As for the planetarium, the chairs, although not ready to FULLY fall-​apart, seemed a little bit rundown. The chairs had a heavily pushed in feel, no matter where I sat in the theater. However, the employees were very knowledgeable in their research though.
And finally, be careful as to the show selection. They have several shows, and one geared specifically for young kids. I’m not a young kid, and I don’t have any kids myself, and although the employee at the purchasing desk didn’t tell me anything about the show and it’s makeup being designed for this age-​group, I felt very strange, being the first time in this planetarium. The show featured the (now deceased) Mr. Fred Rogers.
Do the research, if you’re planning to see this place’s planetarium show.

I came on here to see if there was any reviews for this place and obviously there wasn’t. So I decided to go, when I first walked in I honestly didn’t think it was going to be that great but I stayed optimistic. The staff there were so polite and high spirited and really put me in a good mood to be there. When I first started my walk around the museum there is a lot of activities for kids. If you have a sense of humor, you’ll enjoy all of them. I stayed for a while just messing around with all the activities for kids. So in the end I would definitely go again. This place is an amazing place to take a bunch of kids to. I spent a extra buck and saw the planetarium, depending on the show you should really ask the person that is conducting it what side you should sit on because I sat on the wrong side and had to sit in a weird position to not hurt my neck during the whole show. But again, if you have kids take them here they will enjoy it!
PS — Great find in Schenectady. You honestly don’t think there would be such a nice little museum in Schenectady so I was pleasantly surprised. :)