The Solo Scale:
Here’s what I have to accept: Most people would know the American Museum of Natural History because of Night at the Museum. Honestly, that’s not a bad thing. It’s only the surface of what you’ll get to experience with a visit to this iconic New York museum.
Located between 79th and 81st, it’s just outside Central Park. This means it will pair perfectly if you’re spending the morning exploring what you can see.
There are a couple of options when you’re visiting the museum. There’s the basic ticket, which will cover multiple floors’ worth of exhibitions. You can see a few examples of them on the Included Exhibitions on the AMNH website here. You can also amplify the ticket by purchasing additional experiences (for a minimal additional cost) for temporary exhibits, shows, and more.
TRIP TIP: Buy your tickets in advance. The lineup to purchase tickets can be quite lengthy and eat into your New York City time. Having an online ticket meant that I walked right in after I was finished with security.
When I visited in 2015, that included a temporary exhibition on natural disasters and in 2024, it was elephants. The additional price may feel a little hard to swallow, but bundling multiple items together helps give you the most robust experience.
The more permanent exhibitions included several taxidermy animals in their native landscape, as well as multiple fossils from various periods from the past. That’s great for kids because it’s not truly a natural history museum until you get to see some dinosaurs. The American Museum of Natural History has lots of that on tap. There’s dedicated areas on bugs, some on birds, and places to learn about the cosmos. There are dedicated areas to global natural history as well, stretching from Oceania to South America to Africa and more!
You also get access to the museum itself, which can boast great views of Central Park and interesting little pockets of architecture within the museum itself.
In addition to the Museum, there’s also the Planetarium attached. This is another additional cost for the show. Unless you’re extremely eager for a chance to sit down, I would give this a pass. There’s nothing truly unique about this show versus any other that you can see. With technology advancing the way it has, the images aren’t quite as groundbreaking as they might have been a few decades ago. It was nice to sit down for a while, but if you’re on a budget, I’d suggest skipping this one.
Overall, the price for the permanent exhibitions is fair and even the additional ticketed ones aren’t that much pricier. You can spend multiple hours here, even if you’ve been before. Plus, the size of the museum means that you rarely run into big pockets of crowds (with a few exceptions).
Ready for a visit? Get your tickets and learn about the newest exhibitions at their website!
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