The Orlando Science Center is located downtown in Loch Haven Park. Parking for the entire day in the adjacent parking garage is a flat fee of $5.00 (free for Orlando Science Center members). You'll want to park on level 2 if you can because that is the level that has the bridge you walk across to get to the admission desk of the science center.
Once you park your car and walk across the bridge to the Science Center building you are faced with the gift shop. There is no fee to shop and it can also be easily bypassed because the gift shop is to the left and the admissions desk is on the right side. Admission to the Orlando Science Center is $19/adult, $13/kids 3-11, and free for ages 2 and under. You can also buy a family annual pass for $135, which I strongly suggest considering. The admission fee may seem a bit pricey but when you consider the amount of exhibits they have that appeal to all ages and the fact that you also get admission to one movie/person it is well worth it. You enter the science center on the second floor, so you have to take the stairs or elevator down if you are interested in starting on the first one. (Be prepared to wait for the elevator, especially if the science center is busy. They only have two elevators and one is more hidden and doesn't go to all the floors. The main elevator is in the center of the facility and offers an awesome view but it is slow and gets very congested with parents with strollers going up and down.)
The first floor of the Orlando Science Center is where you will find the live animal exhibits. Called Natureworks, this area of the Science Center exposes you to the many different ecosystems of Central Florida. The atrium area has a pond with several live alligators and turtles in it. Daily feeding time(s) are posted and it is always fun to watch them feed the alligators.
In addition to the atrium pond there are several other small animal exhibits. You can watch a live bee hive in action in one area and see a giant tortoise. Another area has plants and animals you would find in a coral reef. My toddler loves looking at the fish swimming around in the glass tanks. Yet another area teaches you about Florida sinkholes and has a model of a house falling victim to one.
Throughout the day there are live animal encounters scheduled in this area of the Science Center but even when there are none going on there are plenty of hands-on areas where you can feel coral, shells, etc. and look at 3-D models of the insides of animals in the area. My toddler enjoys picking up the different shells to see how heavy they are.
Also on the bottom floor you will find Kid's Town, which is a whole area specifically for toddlers and preschoolers. I first brought my daughter to the Science Center when she was about nine months old and there was not a whole lot for her to do, however, at age two she would be happy to spend a whole day in Kid's Town alone.
Like Natureworks, Kid's Town in separated into several different exhibit areas. They have a "tree" you can climb up into and a city street area you can crawl underneath.
My toddler's two favorite areas are the Orange Grove Factory and the boat/water play area. There is also an area that has a computer in it and a kitchen set and play food items as well as some kid sized tables to sit at and blocks and other small toys. This is a good area for the younger toddler crowd.
The Orange Grove Factory is very interactive and teaches children about the inner workings of an orange grove. It has plenty of fake oranges and the oranges "grow" on little trees,waiting for small hands to pick them. Once they are "picked" kids can pedal a stationary bike to send them up a tube and into the orange factory. My two year old needs a little bit of help pedaling the bicycle, but other than that it is very kid friendly and lots of fun to grab the oranges off of the trees, gather them in the boxes, and send them up the chute.
The boat/water play area has two different sections, a rock formation area and a water table. There are smocks provided but despite the smock my toddler still always manages to get pretty wet. There are many different toy boats in this exhibit and rectangular pieces so that the kids can build dams and channels to direct the boats through the flowing water in the rock formation and water table. The dams and channels are easy enough to build that my toddler needs very little help. She is still way too young to understand the purpose of them and ends up just putting the rectangles on in random patterns but it is a great deal of fun for her and she is usually happy to play here until I decide that she has gotten wet enough and drag her away.
Throughout the day there are also many presentations in the Kid's Town area (free and included with your admission), everything from storytime to arts and craft activities to age appropriate science talks. The daily schedule of activities is listed on the Science Center map. On the day we were there most recently they had a puppet activity, story time, craft time, music time, and a science activity all at different times between 11 am and 3 pm. All of these activities are very informal and will usually hold my toddler's attention for a little while, however, with all of the fun hands-on stuff around her she tends to wander away before they are completely done. There is even a drying rack available for pictures if your child participates in an arts and crafts activity that involves painting and they want to come back later for their picture. The bottom floor of the Science Center also houses a preschool but we have never seen them take over the Kid's Town area in all of the times we have been there.
The bottom floor of the Science Center is also home to the cafeteria. The cafeteria has a small Subway Restaurant with a limited Subway sandwich menu or you can pack and bring a lunch from home. There are plenty of tables in this room to sit and enjoy your lunch at or if it is a beautiful day you might want to consider leaving the science center briefly to enjoy lunch outdoors in the park.
After exploring the first floor we took the elevator up to the second one. The second floor has several different rooms and is home to the traveling exhibits. One of my toddler's favorite exhibits is one of the more permanent exhibits on this floor, All Aboard. All Aboard is located in a small room next to the store and has large trains, planes, and a spaceship that toddlers and younger children can climb in and on.
Most of them are interactive and/or make noise in some way. My toddler's favorite is the train. She loves to climb in the engine and pull the cords and play with the marbles in the marble maze in the caboose.
Another favorite area of this room for her is a small corner set up like a mechanic's garage. They have a car that you can take the wheels on and off of, the hood is propped open so you can pour gasoline and oil in, there are wrenches and other tools to experiment with, etc. She enjoys this area so much I usually have to drag her away from it to see something else.
Next to All Aboard is the room that holds the traveling exhibits. Some of these exhibits will be a lot more toddler/kid friendly than others. The current exhibit (at the time of this writing) is Adventures With Clifford, which is about as toddler friendly as you can get. (I have also seen the very toddler friendly Richard Scarry's Busy Town in this room but I have also seen exhibits that would be of little to no interest for a toddler.) My daughter LOVED the Clifford exhibit!
Adventures With Clifford is based on the Clifford series by Norman Birdwell and is set up into several different stations that children can play at. The entire room is very hands-on and interactive. Children can play in a kid sized restaurant, make music on kid sized instruments, play on a kid sized boat, deliver mail throughout a kid sized town, play in a kid sized dog park, put on a show on a kid sized stage, etc.
There is even a nine foot tall Clifford statue kids can climb on or slide down his tail and a room where kids can write their own "letters" and post them on the walls.
One corner of the room has an area teaching you more about Norman Birdwell and Clifford and a colorful rug with lots of books nearby for children that would prefer to sit and read after all of the running around and activity.
Some days they have scheduled storytimes in this area and other days they have a Clifford character that comes and does meet and greets in a different corner of the exhibit.
The description for this exhibit on the science center's website says "visitors become part of Clifford’s world in this immersive “paws-on” exhibit. During the adventure children and adults will discover Clifford's Big Ideas - 10 simple, tangible life lessons designed to help children navigate their world." I Can't say my daughter knew she was learning anything when she was playing in this exhibit but she definitely had fun!
My daughter loved playing with Clifford's dog bowl and using the pulley to fill it up with huge dog bones. She also really liked building the "sand castles", delivering the mail, and playing in the restaurant. To be honest with you I don't think there is any area of this room that she didn't like/wasn't toddler friendly. It makes me wish it was a permanent exhibit but we will definitely enjoy it the few months that it is here. It did start to get really crowded later in the day when we went back to visit it a second time, so I recommend visiting this room early.
On the other side of the room with the Clifford exhibit is another room where the exhibits change every few months. The current exhibit was Blue Man Group, which my toddler also really enjoyed. There was a small lit tunnel for her to crawl through to get into the exhibit. The rest of the exhibit offers various opportunities to play with sound. Although it does not sound like it would be all that toddler friendly, it is very hands-on and my two year old thoroughly enjoyed it. There are many things to touch to make different noises and even a small Blue Man stage to make music on.
The rest of Science Park also has many hands-on exhibits. Although it is geared more towards older kids, my toddler enjoyed the giant chess pieces and the marble maze. She had fun dropping the marbles into the different tubes. Any of the other exhibits in this room that involved balls in some way were also a hit with her.
The last part of the second floor of the Science Center is where the theater is. You get one movie included with your admission fee. My two year old does not sit through movies yet and enjoys the rest of the exhibits a lot more so we usually skip the theater but is is a great place for a rest or some quiet time if your little one will fall asleep or sit quietly in a dark theater. Sometimes they also use the theater for special presentations.
On this particular visit we skipped the third floor so I will have to update this and add photos next time we visit the Orlando Science Center. While there are a few toddler friendly things on the third floor, it is definitely not my toddler's favorite. The third floor is home to the Engineer It! exhibit, which is all about the science of building. There are plenty of opportunities for hands-on building with LEGOS, tinker toys, and other building materials. There is one area where you can build a boat and see if it floats, and that is probably my daughter's favorite spot in this room.
The fourth floor has permanent exhibits about dinosaurs and our planet. In the dinosaur room there are lots of dinosaur bones to look at but the toddler hot spot is a small "sandbox" where toddlers can "excavate" dinosaur bones. There are several paintbrushes in the box that can be used to brush off the bones. Although this area is really small, my toddler enjoys playing in it.
The Our Planet, Our Universe room teaches you all about the planet earth and outer space. Most of the exhibits in this room are way over my toddler's head but she enjoys experiencing the mock earthquake and watching the marbles spin around and around until they drop into the hole.
The hit for her in this room is the interactive earth,wind, and sky area where visitors are encouraged to fold paper into specific shapes and drop them into one of several wind tubes. My daughter has no idea how to fold the shapes on her own but she really enjoys putting paper into the wind tubes and watching it fly up. This area can keep her amused for quite a while.
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