By the time Halloween morning arrives, the best-laid costume plans have usually gone sideways. A horn has gone missing from a monster mask. A cardboard wing has sagged. Something needs a hot-glue assist, and the kitchen table is already buried under candy wrappers. That is the hour The Discovery has in mind. On Saturday, October 31, 2026, the Terry Lee Wells Nevada Discovery Museum opens its maker space, The Shop, from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. for an Open Build session called Last Minute Halloween, inviting visitors to finish props, costume accessories and decorations with real tools and materials before the evening's trick-or-treating begins.
The museum's own description leans into the improvisational spirit of the holiday. Visitors can make "spooky props, costume accessories, decorations, or last-minute additions to their Halloween look," whether that means "a horn for your monster mask, creepy decoration, or imaginative prop." The only stated limit is creativity. The museum does attach a practical caveat: The Shop offers access to genuine tools and materials that can be dangerous if used improperly, and parents and caregivers are encouraged to help younger tinkerers work safely.
That warning is not boilerplate. The Shop is not a craft table with safety scissors. The museum describes it as a place where "hands-on gets serious," where visitors use real tools and materials and are encouraged to tinker, repurpose, upcycle, take apart and put back together whatever they can get their hands on. The best part, in the museum's telling, is that what you make is yours to keep. It is a working shop inside a science center, and the Halloween session simply points that shop's capabilities at a holiday deadline.
Open Build is a recurring program rather than a one-off. The museum's calendar shows the series taking on different themes through the year, and Last Minute Halloween is scheduled as a recurring event with four sessions in 2026: October 24 and October 25 at 10:30 a.m., October 28 at 4:30 p.m., and the finale on Halloween itself, October 31, beginning at 10:30 a.m. The final date runs a full six hours, matching the museum's Saturday hours of 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The earlier sessions function as a runway; the last one lands on the day itself, when there is no more time left to fix anything at home.
Admission follows the museum's standard pricing, since the event is included with a ticket to the building rather than sold separately. Adult admission is $17.95, youth ages 6 to 17 and seniors 65 and older are $15.95, children ages 1 to 5 are $13.95, and children under 1 are free. Members and students at the University of Nevada, Reno and Truckee Meadows Community College get in free with valid ID. Visitors with an EBT/SNAP, WIC or TANF card can buy $5 daily admission per person for up to six people during normal museum hours through the museum's Discovery for All program, and the museum also participates in the Association of Science-Technology Centers reciprocal admission network.
The setting has its own history, which is part of what makes a Halloween morning in The Shop feel a little unlikely. The Discovery occupies the former Reno City Hall at 490 South Center Street, a 67,000-square-foot building. The building sits between Reno's downtown core and the Midtown District, which is why the museum describes itself that way on its website.
The museum itself began with a question rather than a building. The concept came from Chris Riche, a local entrepreneur who wondered whether Reno could support a children's museum or science center. He paid for a feasibility study out of his own pocket, and when the results came back, he formed a board and began raising money. The Terry Lee Wells Foundation contributed $4 million, and the museum took the foundation's name. By the time it opened to the public in 2011, more than $21 million had been raised. The Discovery has since grown into northern Nevada's home for hands-on science exploration, drawing 182,230 visitors in 2019 alone, according to Wikipedia's figures.
Terry Lee Wells, for whom the museum is named, was a Reno philanthropist born in 1941, the daughter of Howard A. and Lucia Wells; her father was president of Wells Cargo, the Reno trucking company. She died in 2002, nine years before the museum opened, and never saw the building carry her name. The Nevada Women's History Project's biography of her notes that people driving down South Center Street see the sign and may bring their kids for a visit without knowing who she was. Friends remembered her as fun-loving, a little outrageous and generous, a woman who met one lifelong friend at age nine by offering to punch her in the nose.
The museum also carries a small piece of the Smithsonian. Its Spark!Lab, a space devoted to the process of invention, was the first in a network of labs built on a model derived from the original Spark!Lab at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. That institutional DNA, invention as a hands-on process rather than a display behind glass, runs through The Shop as well. Where Spark!Lab is about the arc of an idea, The Shop is about the mess of making it, and Open Build is where the two meet a theme.
For a family with a half-finished costume and a party that evening, the appeal is straightforward. The museum supplies the tools, the materials and the space to make a mess, and the visitor leaves with whatever they built. The Halloween session adds a deadline and a theme, and the timing is deliberate: doors open at 10:30 a.m. and the shop stays open until 4:30 p.m., six hours to solve a costume problem that probably did not exist a week ago. It is a science museum betting that the most memorable engineering challenge of the year might be a horn for a monster mask.
More information, including the full calendar of Open Build themes, is available through The Discovery's events calendar at nvdm.org.