Arizona Science Center has reopened
After temporarily closing its doors in March, the Arizona Science Center reopened on Saturday, June 20.
Access to the downtown Phoenix science museum will include themed, guided tours of its attractions with no more than 10 guests per group. The center will follow a reopening plan based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
The scheduled tours will feature themes like “Yuck! The Science of Gross” and “Stellar Space Science,” and will take guests through an immersive experience on their topic of choice.
According to Chevy Humphrey, the
Hazel A. Hare President and CEO of Arizona Science Center, the center has consulted with Banner Health to create safety guidelines for its guided tours.
Guests ages 2 and older will be required to wear face masks, social distancing practices will be enforced and the tour will stop for frequent sanitation
breaks. Additionally, all Arizona Science Center employees are required to complete daily health screenings.
As a typically hands-on educational center, the museum also developed a tool to distribute to guests for a completely touchless experience. The tool can be used to push buttons, open and shut doors and interact with exhibits without physically touching them. At the end of the tour, the tools are dropped off and sanitized.
The Arizona Science Center was one of the first institutions to close amid the spread of the coronavirus in March. Now, the museum is among the first to reopen — and it’s taking its position as an educational resource seriously.
“We think these guided experiences are an opportunity because it’s our mission to help the community understand how to live, work and manage social situations in ongoing presence with COVID-19 and beyond,” Humphrey said. “We feel it’s our responsibility as a science-learning organization to educate and model how we need to exist in this COVID-19 world.”
But despite having a structured reopening plan with clear-cut safety guidelines in place, the threat coronavirus poses in Arizona remains steady — and the state’s daily reported cases have recently reached record levels.
“We are certainly concerned about the trends. We made the decision to reopen in a very safe and measured way, with our new small group guided experiences, after receiving strong validation from science and medical experts locally that our health and safety measures and operating protocols allow us to safely reopen in this environment,” Humphrey said. “The center is actively monitoring the situation in our state and will modify our plans as appropriate and advisable.”
When the Arizona Science Center closed in March, the ticket sales that make up 70% of its revenue plummeted. While the center kept most of its fulltime staff, it laid off 85 workers.
However, with cash reserves to lean on and $1,011,765 worth of federal funding from the first round of the government’s PPP loans, the center was able to keep the majority of their full-time staff.
“We kept a really strong team that can help us open and rebuild after three months of closure,” Humphrey said. “It’s going to be slow-going until we figure out what our organization looks like, and once we figure that out, then we’ll be able to hire people back.”
While the museum created several online initiatives as it remained physically closed, it also came up with a comprehensive plan for reopening to adapt to the unpredictable nature of the spread of coronavirus.
The Arizona Science Center’s plan for reopening is broken into four phases of activities it will reinstate:
Phase one: Guided tours and limited in-person camps.
Phase two: School-based programs like field trips and STEM clubs.
Phase three: The science center opens as a self-guided experience, Arizona Science Store and Bean Sprouts Cafe reopen.
Phase four: Programs that require more attention to social distancing, sanitation and staffing, such as birthday parties and overnight events.
“Phase two of our reopening plan starts when schools inform us that they are able to resume field trips. Timing for phases three and four will be based on an assessment of the data in close consultation with health care experts,” Humphrey said.
As the news around the coronavirus pandemic evolves, Humphrey says the Arizona Science Center will continue adapting as it learns to provide immersive learning experiences while facing the threat of a pandemic.
“I’m hoping that the guided experiences are going to be rich and people are going to love being deeply engaged in science, but I do know that there’s a lot of people that want self-guided engagement opportunities,” Humphrey said. “We’re rebuilding our business model, and we’re testing a lot of things to figure out what’s going to work. It’s Arizona Science Center 2.0. “
In the future, the center likely will add more guided tours with themes including “Weird Science/Mythbusters,” “Amazing Arizona,” and “Mysteries of the Human Body.”
While popular attractions like the museum’s life-size stomach exhibit, soft play area and water atrium will remain closed throughout during the first two phases of reopening, the center’s “T. rex Unearthed: The Story of Victoria” exhibit will be highlighted in several tours. The popular dinosaur installation takes visitors up close to the real skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex hatched 66 million years ago. The exhibit will remain with the center until January 2021.
Guests can purchase tickets for the scheduled tours at azscience.org/guidedexperiences/.
“T. rex Unearthed: The Story of Victoria”: This paleontology-focused experience will take guests back 66 million years to a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Guests will meet Victoria the T. rex, explore real fossils and participate in interactive demonstrations.
“Stellar Space Science”: The Stellar Space Science tour takes visitors to the full-dome Dorrance Planetarium with live demonstrations and hands-on exhibits exploring freezing temperatures, gravitational pull and other space phenomena.
“Yuck! The Science of Gross”: Tourgoers will learn about the grossest body functions, germs and other icky science themes in this guided experience. Attendees will learn how the body makes poop, play a game of “guess that smell” and participate in an interactive specimen dissection.
“Extra-Ordinary: The Science of Superpowers”: This demonstration-focused tour explores the science behind “superpowers,” and will show attendees how to make objects fly, harness the scientific elements and test their own superpowers. The tour includes a visit to Victoria the T. rex.
Details: 600 E. Washington St., Phoenix. $38.95 for adults, $31.95 for children; $14.95 and $9.95 for members. 602-716-2000, azscience.org/guided-experiences.