Required: An Interest in Vikings (Jorvik Viking Centre)

Member Name: elizabethcullen

Product:	Jorvik Viking Centre
Date:	28/10/09 (38 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: transport links, in a great city

Disadvantages: very boring, expensive

We decided to have a day trip to York a few months ago as it was the school holidays, and everyone had a bit of money to spend and was looking forward to a good day out. A few days before the trip, my Mum won some tickets to get into Jorvik Viking Centre in the centre of York for free, and as it was free we decided we might as well go.

We had had a nice morning in York, visiting plenty of the shops and we also went to Café Rouge for lunch. Then after lunch we thought it might be a good time to use our free tickets, thinking that everyone would be having lunch. It is located right in the centre of York, five minutes walk away from the train station and situated in the middle of plenty of popular shops and restaurants, both chain and individual as well as being a minute or two's walk away from York's market with a variety of stalls. There isn't any parking very near as its in the city, but there are numerous car parks on the outskirts of the main part of the city as well as bus routes that go really near.

It turned out that we were wrong about the timing, there was in fact a huge queue, something which I now wonder about as I didn't see it as that good. However, the huge queue was for tickets as once you had bought your tickets you could go straight through to the actual attraction.

When you first entered, the impression it gave off was distinctly unimpressive. Before you entered the attraction there was just a pay desk and the very long queue, this is because most of the attraction is actually built underground. At this point, you may have to wait for a short time because they let people through in groups, we only had to wait a minute or two as it was very busy on the day we went, but I can see this being a problem on the less busy and off peak times.

Once you have enough people in your group, the doors will then open and you can enter a room which involves simulated time travel. There are a few rows of benches, and one you sit down you are warned that these may move. They do, as the screen lights up and you see each period of time flashing before you each with people from each time period in the fashion of that time speaking to you. The seats do shake a bit, but its not really anything exciting and if you aren't too keen on this type of thing there is the option to stand at the back of the room, good for elderly people and babies. When I first heard about this I thought it would be a really amazing simulator ride, like you get in theme parks but this turned out to not be the case. The next part of the attraction is called 'time cars,' and is a very slow ride, similar to one you might get in a little kids section of a theme park, however this would definitely be an educational little kids section! You get into cars, two people per car and go on a slow ride around the circuit which shows the history and life of Vikings, complete with sights and authentic smells. Its over within 10 minutes, and then you're onto the next section. It might be helpful to some people that you can change the language that the audio commentary is on as you go around. I didn't really find this section that interesting at all, but it was relaxing on a boiling day in York.

The next section is a museum with various exhibits, about the life of Vikings of course with different historical artefacts from the time. These are things such as clothes, bones, jewellery, remains and tools. How long you spend here really depends on how interested you are, and how long you normally spend in museums - some people just see something and that's enough, but some people like to study it. If you're one of the second people then you could probably stay here for at least twenty minutes, but I was bored after five minutes. When you exited this, there was also a gift shop but the really nice stuff seemed expensive, although there was a pocket money section I decided it would be a much better idea to spend my money on the clothes shops outside than on pens and pencils. There wasn't any eating facilities here, apart from sweets and ice cream in the gift shop.

To do the whole museum probably took around 20-25 minutes, fine if its free but if I was paying I wouldn't want to spend that much money: current prices on the website as of 2009 are £8.50 for an adult and £6.00 for a child. It was also rather boring, but for people with an interest in Vikings it would be great.

Summary: Not much good unless your intrested.