The Ball Machine, the tube-and-chute contraption that has been the first thing a certain generation of Atlanta kids runs toward, comes out of the Children's Museum of Atlanta on Aug. 2. It has been in the building since the current Pemberton Place location opened in 2003, and it was popular enough that the museum kept it through the 2015 renovation when plenty of other exhibits did not survive.
The send-off is the weekend of Aug. 1 and 2. The museum is handing out complimentary doughnut holes and letting visitors take home one of the machine's orange, light blue or white balls while supplies last. The code HAVEABALL takes 10% off admission for anyone planning a last run.
The retirement is not a subtraction so much as a demolition permit. It clears space for a $2.5 million overhaul of the interactive play area, which museum officials say will be built around compassion, neighborliness, perseverance, curiosity and critical thinking. That is a lot of freight for a play structure to carry, but the current one managed 23 years of it without a mission statement.
The gap in between is the part worth watching. The museum plans a series of pop-up exhibits while it builds what it calls a reimagined replacement, scheduled to debut in 2027. That means most of a year where downtown's flagship attraction for small children is running on temporary programming.
That matters more here than it would elsewhere. Pemberton Place is downtown's family anchor, sharing a block with the Georgia Aquarium and World of Coca-Cola, and the Children's Museum is effectively the only major downtown attraction designed for visitors who cannot read yet. A signature exhibit going offline for a construction cycle is a real hole in the district's daytime draw, right as downtown is trying to convert World Cup momentum into repeat local visits.
Original reporting: Axios Atlanta (July 21, 2026)
