We’re fortunate in Birmingham to be within a couple hours of other great cities—Atlanta, Nashville, Huntsville—and sometimes it’s fun to get out of town for a day or weekend and explore what they have to offer. During a recent school holiday, my family decided to scoot over to Atlanta to visit the Sloomoo Institute for an afternoon of ooey-gooey slime fun. In the words of my 7-year-old: “This place is a 10 out of 10!”
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“Institute” sounds serious, but the second you walk through the doors of the Buckhead location and catch a glimpse of the dripping floor-to-ceiling slime wall behind the ticket desk, you know you’re in for some serious fun. Our visit began with a short video before we were ushered into the slime wall space and encouraged to fill out name tags with our slime names. (The name “Sloomoo” came from a viral Instagram moment where you replace every vowel in your name with “oo.” I became “Stoophoonoooo.” Nice to meet you.) From there, we added our own slime stamp to the big wall—and that’s where the guided tour ends and we were left to play our way through the rest of the immersive magic of Sloomoo.
We took a short break from sensory play to sit in on a “slime school” lesson, where our “instructor” demonstrated different types of slime, how to reactivate slime, and showed us how to get slime out of clothes (vinegar+water, and yes, it really works!). Lesson concluded, we stepped into the slime factory room, where my daughter suited up in layers of plastic ponchos and two shower caps before getting “slimed” at Sloomoo Falls.
The experience ends at Sloomoo’s DIY Bar, where each ticket holder gets to choose their favorite slime texture, then customize an 8-ounce container with color, fragrance, and charms. There’s nothing kids love more than playing with blobs and gobs of stretchy slime—except when they’re playing with blobs and gobs of slime they get to take home! Three containers—icee, butter, and thick & glossy for us!—and a slew of slime memories later, we hit the road back to Birmingham.
The Sloomoo Institute is a giant, science-y, sensory experience, kid- and—armed with the vinegar-water cleaning hack—parent-approved, and we can’t wait to go back. With the President’s Day holiday coming up this month, maybe it’s the perfect time to take road trip with your family.
For more information, ticket details, and directions, visit sloomooinstitute.com.