Make sure you take those nail scissors out of your bag beforehand! (Natural History Museum (London))

Member Name: CokaCola

Product:	Natural History Museum (London)
Date:	17/08/09 (51 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Dinosaur cats from real bones, interesting!

Disadvantages: The "Currently Alive"exhibits were disappointing, go to the zoo instead.

I recently visited the Natural History Museum on Cromwell Road in London and I'd like to start the review by telling the reader to gnore the entrance prices in the little overview Dooyoo have given for this attraction, I can assure you that entry to the Museum is free although they do have special exhibitions from time to time and these cost to enter. You also have to pay to enter the "Butterfly Garden" which I believe is a newer attraction at the Museum.

Best way to get there is by tube. Take the underground to south Kensington station where you will be directed to a subway (the walking kind). This subway is extremely long and perhaps the biggest subway I have ever been in, it is totally packed with tourists although it is quite airy and light and not too unpleasant, just a little tiring. The Natural History Museum is signposted in the subway, and upon exiting the subway, you are pretty much right outside the rather impressive building.

At the moment, it is tourist season, which might explain the queues. I went about a week ago, and the queue to get into the museum was rather impressive, they had airport type belt barriers in place in a snake shape, and there were literally hundreds of people waiting to be allowed entry. Thankfully the queue was moving fairly quickly and people were being allowed in as people left the museum. Once you get inside you have to go through security who will ask you if you have any sharp objects (Knives, Pen Knives, Scissors etc) and will ask you to open your bag so that they can check this. They will shine a torch into your bag, but will not thoroughly search it, and I must say they were very respectful and polite.

You then go into the museum. There are several attractions within the museum, for example dinosaurs. The dinosaur exhibit is perhaps the most popular and includes cast dinosaur skeletons, some of which are on the ground, but many are suspended from the ceiling. You are eventually led up onto a walk way which is a bit like a bridge and you then pass all of the elevated skeletons. There are some pretty scary looking animatronic velociraptors along the way with blood soaked jaws and these stare at you with a suprisingly real expression. In the middle of the dinosaur exhibit is a special T rex feature with a life size T rex robot. This is pretty laughable really, not at all scary and quite limited in his moves. The velociraptors are much more entertaining.

After the dinosaurs, you can follow the blue signs which explore life on earth at present. There are lots and lots of stuffed animals from pretty much all of the major families, they have lions, bears, pandas, birds etc etc. Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed with this section, I just wondered what the point in it was when you could instead go to the Zoo at regents park and see a lot more species, all animated and perfectly healthy. A lot of the stuffed animals were discoloured and the panda didn't even look like a panda in all honesty. As a bit of a reptile fan, I was disappointed to reach the glass case of snake specimens to find most of them were made out of plastic???

There is a big hall which contains a few whale skeletons and a life sized model of a blue whale, as well as other larger animals like a couple of elephants. After leaving this, there are a couple of other exhibits, upstairs there is an evolution exhibit showing the gradual changes Apes underwent to become humans and there is also an insect area with a giant robotic scorpion.

Of course as you'd expect, there is a gift shop - although I wasn't too impressed with it, most of the items were ridiculously expensive and there simply wasn't the range of natural history books and gifts that I had hoped for.

All in all I would say the museum is worth a visit, the dinosaur attraction is good, but I thought that the other attractions were quite boring and no where near as good as a visit to the Zoo. Not many people agree with me here though it seems as the museum has a glowing review in general. I'd say go and see it, it's worth a look.

Summary: Worth a visit, though I was left slightly disappointed.