CHUBBUCK — The owners of My World Discovery Museum in the Pine Ridge Mall plan to host a Harry Potter Mini Camp version of their annual Hogwarts Day from 5 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Limited entrance for the event, which will be hosted at the museum, is available for all participants with a paid ticket, available for $15 at myworlddiscovery.weebly.com.
Normally, the owners Melody Daniels and Natali McKee hold their extensive flagship event over nearly two days to celebrate Hogwarts and Harry Potter.
“It’s big, like almost two full days of Hogwarts,” Daniels said. “The kids come and stay there for a long stretch of time.”
But the nonprofit has had to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic this year. They hope things will take a turn for the better as more people are vaccinated.
“Once those mandates are done and we’re back to normal life, we’ll do our big day at Hogwarts again,” McKee said. “We already have plans for it.”
She says the event normally features lots of character interactions.
“So this is just a little taste of it for the kids that really want it, but can’t,” Daniels said.
She said it will essentially be a mini version of the normal Hogwarts celebration.
“We can’t do a big thing because of COVID,” McKee said.
The larger, typical Hogwarts event will be hosted next January, McKee said.
“We already have plans for it then,” she said.
The museum opened Oct. 15, and since then they’ve had 3,500 people come in over about three months.
She says kids who attend the museum — which features foam blocks and plastic tools to help create items from light cardboard and others creative activities — enjoy the variety of possibilities.
McKee and Daniels limit the number of youths at the museum, and that will be true for the mini version of the Hogwarts celebration, too.
Youths at the museum will generally stay and enjoy themselves for an hour and a half to two hours, McKee said.
And some will stay much longer.
“We have several who’ve been here for four or five hours,” she said.
But usually the youngest participants are there for about an hour and a half because they need nap time and foods, according to Daniels.
Meanwhile, things have been going as well as can be expected even as the nonprofit has adapted to COVID, having just signed a lease when the virus hit.
“Our lease was supposed to start in May of last year,” McKee said. “So we shifted it back.”
She said mall management worked with them so that we could push the arrangement to where they needed it and then get it started.
The two owners had actually been working toward opening the business overall for about three years.
“Three years ago this was just a conversation about what to do with our life,” McKee said.
Thus the nonprofit — which sanitizes and cleans frequently — is funded by multiple sources.
These include grants and fundraisers and business sponsors and community donations, Daniels said.
“So it covers lot of ground, she said.
And Daniels says participants have been really respectful as the museum adapted to the virus in trying to respect each other and trying to be careful with COVID.
But the extensive cleaning is something they would have done even without virus, McKee said.
And she said kids for the most part have adapted to the masks. All employees also wear masks.
She says, though, that there are limited tickets available for the Harry Potter themed event, during which all characters, experiments and activities will all be centered around the world of Harry Potter. They look forward to it.
“It’s fun,” Daniels said.