Butterfly Pavilion and Insect Center, Westminster

My kids loved the place other than the waterpark. They got to hold a trantula "Rosie" and got to see how butterflys (pupae to winded advetures) came into this work. Excellent for kid 3-15 (and us adult kids too). I thought the area was too small in size. It had a great potential for becomeing a great attraction. However,I understood why they could not have a larger butterfly garden room- too costly to maintain especially with limited funding.

I loved the way you could walk around & observe the buterflies as they went about their daily butterfly business. I could sit & watch for hours! This is a great place to take the family, we try to go at least once or twice a year.

We were impressed with all the improvements in the Butterfly Pavillion since our last visit several years ago. The admission fee is not cheap. I took my daughter, my 8 year old grandson and my 5 year old granddaughter as our final summer outing prior to school starting next week. The employee (doubt a volunteer would have behaved in this manner)we encountered in the observatory was self-assured, prematurely grey and had a buzz cut. He definitely took an overbearing tone with my 5 year old granddaughter...she was standing patiently for a long time with her finger out hoping to have a butterfly light on her....later, there was one on the ground that did walk onto her hand....this employee saw the butterfly on her and hastily informed her "We have a problem here" and "we were talking about that for 30 minutes." He was mistaken and had not told us a thing, prior to that point, why the butterflies should not be on the oily skin of your hand.....or anything else about the butterflies...he was engrossed with a group of mainly adults...there were other children picking flowers and getting butterflies to ride on them...another group had little boys who were trying to stomp on the butterflies on the path...my grandchildren were well-supervised and they were not allowed to behave in a disorderly manner...My granddaughter was heartbroken over the harsh way this man corrected her. Perhaps he should take a class in effectively dealing with children. We had discussed buying a membership to this prior to the incident but reconsidered.

I was very disappointed. What there was to see was great, however, there wasn't much. We were done seeing everything in 30 minutes. In my opinion it is mostly a place for children to enjoy.