For over 25 years, kids have been traveling to 1920s Egypt — no passport required — via a secret entrance in Port Discovery Children’s Museum.

Inside the Adventure Expeditions exhibit, children can navigate secret passageways, find a pharaoh’s lost tomb and pull a raft across the Nile River. Designed by a Disney Imagineer, according to the museum, it’s also the last-standing original exhibit that families could explore when the museum opened in 1998.

But for any young explorers looking to solve the exhibit’s ancient quest, time is ticking.

An influx of $2.5 million is set to replace Adventure Expeditions with a new exhibit called Joyful Steps in a few years. And in the meantime, two other new Port Discovery exhibits are slated to open this fall as part of the museum’s $17.5 million, five-year exhibition plan.

Altogether, the three forthcoming exhibits represent about a $5.7 million investment in museum updates. Port Discovery’s future, according to museum leaders, is multigenerational, prioritizing learning through play and elevating Baltimore and Maryland scenery to set Port Discovery apart from other children’s museums across the country.

“Everyone has a water room,” said Vice President of Development and Marketing Sonja Cendak, “but our water room is overlaid with information on the Chesapeake Bay and those kinds of icons. And that’s what we are trying to do as we continue to renovate and refresh all the pieces of our museum.”

Come October, Port Discovery will welcome two new exhibits: Galactic Builders and SKIES, both funded by private donations and some state support.

The first is a space-themed foray into STEAM, or science, technology, engineering, art and math. There will be rocket launching, parachute testing and rover building in a space where big families won’t feel rushed.

“The scientific process takes time. So instead of doing an activity and running off, it’s doing an activity, taking it to the next step, exploring the scientific process,” Cendak said. “We’re also trying to create activities that can be modified for both our 3-year-olds and their 13-year-old cousins that come with them.”

The pace will be even slower at SKIES, which will be “2,200 square feet of a low-sensory calming space,” Cendak said. There, families can navigate midday toddler meltdowns, read a book or simply show their youngsters how they can play and engage in a quieter way. According to a news release, the exhibit is themed around the “daily sky rotation between the sunrise and sunset” and will include reading nooks as well as pillows and blankets for a time-honored children’s tradition: fort building.

A third new exhibit, Joyful Steps, will open in about three years. According to the news release, it’s part of a Lilly Endowment Inc. initiative supporting 23 children’s museums to encourage positive character trait development in children.

Port Discovery’s version will be “framed around a Baltimore block of row homes that invites children and families to move their bodies, engage their imaginations, and explore joy as a character trait.” The exhibit will include Reflection Park, The Rowhouses of Glimmer Street and Awesome Alley, featuring activities like yoga, dance, drumming and a story booth. Kids will even get to sit on stoops.

“It’s really about creating joy through mind, body, spirit and soul,” said Port Discovery President and CEO Carter Polakoff. She said there would be take-home activities and other ways to celebrate positive character traits like kindness and curiosity.

Polakoff said the museum also wants to “infuse the community more into our design,” partly by incorporating murals or wall sculptures by local artists into the new exhibits.

And in all of these new museum spaces, Polakoff said, there’s a renewed emphasis on supporting parents and caregivers.

Visitors will notice more seating, more comfortable spaces and more educators on the floor who can help tiny visitors better interact with adults and even other kids.

Polakoff wants families to see Port Discovery as a learning lab created by educators where everyone comes together through play.

And they may be guided to do so by their favorite older humans who learned to play at Port Discovery themselves.

“We have people who came here on field trips when they were in the third grade, now bringing their kids, and grandparents that brought their kids now bringing their grandchildren,” Cendak said. “[For] a young child that’s going to hang out at Galactic Builders and go up those Joyful Steps, we hope in 20 years, Port Discovery will be still be here.”

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.