Johnson Geo Centre

I actually thought this museum was great. I found the displays interesting. There were fossil displays, replicas of human skulls from Neanderthals comparing to modern day humans & short movies about how the earth was formed etc.
I didn’t pay much attention to the oil related displays so maybe that’s why I enjoyed it. Nice to see actor Gordon Pinset doing one of the informative movies.

Pro-​oil field propaganda disguised as a legitimate educational experience.
Now that that’s out of the way —
This place is not worth the number of hours it will take you to read the descriptions on all the displays. Instead, take the guided tour. While I was there, there was an earnest and intelligent second year geology student giving the tour. He made rocks interesting and cool, even to me, a very biology-​oriented individual. Apart from the tour, I would recommend watching the films screened in the 3D theatre. Only detracting factor is the number of kids. They WILL oooh and aaah loudly at the screen. Sorry if I sound like a b*tch, but I’m pretty dedicated to my child free lifestyle.
DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT watch the intro presentation to the Geo Centre. It reminded me of a science presentation I gave to my class in the second grade.
Staff at the ticket counter and the gift shop are rude. But hooray for the good-​looking and well-​informed tour guide!

This was an absolute snore, and would likely stunt anyone’s interest in geology. Most full grown adults have enough knowledge about the Titanic and fossils to breeze through much of this museum.
The information about the Space Program was dated and needs a rehaul, while the Exxon-​Mobil oil exhibit was laughable propaganda for the industry, and failed to disclose the severe damage that that the oil industry can do to the ecology.
Don’t let the size of the museum, fool you either. There is a ton of wasted space.

Maybe my expectations were set to height by Geo Centre hype men, maybe my friends didn’t realize just how little interest I have in science before bringing me here. No matter what happened, the Geo Centre is just not my jam.
While I feel the subject matter has potential and the location just off Signal Hill can’t be beat, I was bored to tears here by very dry exhibits. I can’t remember if there weren’t enough opportunities to interact with the exhibits or if they were just buried in paragraphs of small text about this rock or that plate, but I just couldn’t get into it.
Word to the review that points out the serious oil and gas slant. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but yeah… much more corporate resource than ‘yay earth and nature and stuff!’

While the geological history of Newfoundland is a fascinating topic, and the setting of Signal Hill is stunning, the quality of presentation and the science take a backseat to staying on what appears to be a politically-​motivated message of cheerleading resource exploitation. The heavy handed approach to exhibit curation, the writing/​narration of introductory videos and the inclusion of an «Exxon-​Mobil Oil & Gas Gallery» makes this agenda a little too obvious to ignore.
This made what could have been a well-​designed and informative discovery of geological history and science into something that felt forced and crafted by a bureaucratic committee of stakeholders. More attention to experience design and letting the science tell the story would improve the Geo Centre a lot.

Geo Center is what the name satest, it is about the rocks that are found on Newfoundland. You can choose to sit in on videos about Newfoundland, walk around vacrious georaphical exhibits. Great palce to learn about Newfoundlands history.