More Impressive In The Movies (American Museum of Natural History)

Member Name: lilmissmup

Product:	American Museum of Natural History
Date:	10/05/09 (117 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Something to do if it rains, Kids might like it more.

Disadvantages: Expensive if you want to see it all.

On our trip to New York one of the things I really wanted to do was go to the American Natural History Musuem.

I had seen it in some movies and thought it looked really good and so we did this on our first day in the city.

The museum is located near Central Park on the west side so a positive is that you can walk through the park on your way there but it is a good 30 - 45 minute walk from the beginning of the parks 7th Avenue entrance.

Once you get to the museum it does look very impressive with its stone steps and its located in a beautiful building, as you walk in you enter a huge lobby area with the ticket kiosks and desks.

The musuem gives you a few choices of how to obtain your tickets, if you have previously purchased before entry you can go in the fast track queue, you can also obtain your tickets from an automated machine which was our plan but we gave up after 5 minutes as didn't understand what we were buying as it was very unclear and so we opted for the good old fashioned manned desk to get our tickets.

This is when my great impressions of the museum started to wane, you would expect to pay one entrance price per adult or child and gain entry to all the museum yes?

Well no not here! You have to pay extra if you want to go into the special exhibits, you only pay a set price if you just want access to the main museum itself and you do only have to donate for this but as we wanted to see more as we will not be going back again (and we won't after visiting it now!) we brought a museum and space show ticket at $24 each as my boyfriend is really interested in space.

We were given a floor plan of the museum and off we went.

We got to the museum about 2.30pm and my first recommendation would be if your going for the first time and aren't local you really need to go for the whole day if you want to see everything as we only had 3 hours to walk around the 5 levels including seeing our 30 minute space show and I felt like I was running around for the whole time and didn't really get to spend as much time as I would liked to have in a few of the areas.

We did manage to get lost several times whilst in there, when you are in the vicinity of the elevators and stairs there are signs saying whats on the level you are on but there are no arrows to say "this way to the dinosaurs" which I found a tad annoying.

The space film that we saw "Cosmic Collisions" was the highlight of my visit, it was shown in the Hayden Planetarium and you really felt as if you were floating in space watching planets and stars fly around your head.

Apart from that aspect of the day everything else has turned into a bit of a blur, we were taking lots of pictures at first but this got boring after a while as we trudged around the museum trying to figure out where we were.

I felt the museum could have made more effort considering its size and status in assisting people with its visit, we only found one expert in the dinosaur department who was happy to talk to you about the exhibits, in fact he was overly enthusiastic but he was the only helper I saw throughout the 5 levels.

I also thought it was a bit of a cheek to charge for entrance to various exhibits, because of this we missed entry to the Climate Change and Butterfly exhibits as we didn't want to pay any more.

I am not sure if I would recommend it here or not, if I lived local I might as you would have more time to see it all or maybe go back again but if your just on a holiday like us unless you had kids begging you to go I would miss it and go to the one in London instead!

***This review will also be posted on Ciao under the same user name***

Summary: At least when you leave you get to see the gorgeous Central Park!