I was in Toronto last weekend, and had a little bit of free time to potentially cram in a museum visit for my 2024 Museum Visit resolution. Obviously, the most important museum in Toronto is the Hockey Hall of Fame, but I saw that the last time I was in town. Next up would be the Royal Ontario Museum, which is supposed to be incredible. But, I dunno, I was already being overloaded with activities and information during my trip, and the ROM seemed like just a bit much to cram in between other stuff. I needed something significantly less important- just some museum-shaped brain candy. I tried to go to a shoe museum, but even that seemed like a bit much, and I went to the hotel for a nap instead. The next day I had a couple hours to kill with my sister and my young niece, meaning we had to find something kid-friendly. After my museum research, I had the perfect solution:
The Museum of Illusions!
I’ve discovered since visiting that apparently the Museum of Illusions is a worldwide chain museum! I didn’t even know that was a thing! But they have locations all over the place. I didn’t know this at the time, but it wouldn’t have affected our decision to go. Tickets were a whopping $25 Canadian for adults and $20 for kids. That’s $18 adults and $15 kids in real money, which doesn’t sound quite as bad. I was under the impression that they control access to avoid overcrowding, but after visiting, it’s clear they either don’t do this, or they’re totally fine setting their capacity at “one billion visitors per square foot.”
The museum was BUSY! It was kinda small, totally packed, and everyone in there was having an ABSOLUTE BLAST! Which means this will not be a chill, boring museum visit. No no no. This is sensory overload, in the best possible way. The busyness means that you can’t really linger on any one illusion for too long (at least, not for any of the good ones) because there’s generally someone waiting, or at least someone will come along who will then be waiting. But that doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily too rushed. My niece was having the time of her life, and was literally running from exhibit to exhibit to see what the next one was.
This frenetic pace meant that I would wager most visitors weren’t bothering to take the time to stop and actually learn something. That being said, the museum did do a half-ass attempt at being educational. Every single illusion had a plaque of small-font text on the wall next to it explaining what the illusion is and how it works. I’m a big nerd, so I did actually attempt to read as many of these as I could (which was not a lot). The descriptions were rarely more than skin-deep, and the main value from the plaques was just in helping understand what we were actually supposed to do at any given illusion station. In other words, if you’re visiting the museum for educational purposes, you will be disappointed.
Now, if you’d like to just let loose and have some fun interacting with neat-o exhibits, then this is the place for you! This museum is pretty much designed for people to post themselves on social media. You’ve got all your classic: forced perspective that makes the person in one corner look smaller than the person in the other corner; holograms, upside down sets so you can flip the photo and look like you’re on the ceiling, head on a platter, and a whole ton of other stuff involving mirrors. There were also rooms where I really don’t know what the illusion was even supposed to be, but it was fun nonetheless. For example, a room with a slanty floor so you keep falling over, a room where you walk on a catwalk through a spinning tune, and a room where they had different color spotlights on you so that you cast trippy multi-color shadows on the wall. There were a couple staff members on hand to help people figure out what to do at the exhibits, and they were very nice, but there was just too much chaos in there for the softspoken teenagers to be particularly effective at communicating much of anything.
We visited the museum on a Saturday afternoon, which I’m guessing might be peak time. I’m wondering how different the experience would be on a school day. It might be cool to take in the exhibits at my own pace, and the not feel rushed at all. On the other hand, would the same museum empty lose some of it’s energy? Or would I find the whole thing tacky if I didn’t have a child with me whose energy was contagious? I don’t know. I think if the tickets were any more expensive, I would find it gimmicky and not worth the value. I spent about an hour there before I had to leave, but honestly I’m not sure that I could have spent much more time there than that. On the other hand, this place was legitimately a ton of fun, and the ticket price wasn’t too unreasonable for an hour’s fun. It’s definitely great for kids, but I could also see this being a perfect first or second date activity, or a great rainy day activity for friend groups. It’s not quite substantive enough to be a stand-alone activity, but tack it on before or after coffee or lunch and you’ve got yourself a pleasant little outing. Definitely bring another person (or two or three!), because this place would be way less fun alone. And definitely don’t forget to bring along your camera! Check out these sweet shots:
Helga without the H 