American Museum of Natural History

If you watched Ben Stiller’s movie Night at the Museum, this is the location where the collections turn alive at night... though not all scenes were taken there. The museum also is the largest natural history museum in the world. It is located at the west part of Central Park, 81 St. subway station. There are two entrance doors: 

• Main Entrance (79th St. at Central Park West) which gonna lead you to the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda and directly amazed by the great hall and three dinosaurs frame. They appear in the scene where the long-necked Barosaurs is protecting its young from Allosaurs.

• Rose Center Entrance (81st St. between Central Park West and Columbus Ave) The second option is the side door with the entrance from Roosevelt Park. Entrance will lead you to the lower level called Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Hall of the Universe displaying cool exhibition about galaxies. This entrance usually has a lesser queue.

There will be security checking for your bags at both entrances. 

Museum opens daily from 10:00 to 17:45 and the ticket price is $22 for adults. Install Explorer application on your device as the map guide through your visit. There are also some other interesting applications as you can choose here: http://www.amnh.org/apps. The museum provides free wifi ensuring apps working well.

You can read some fun facts about this museum here: http://goo.gl/w1XOG3. Perhaps only some visitors know that you can actually pay for sleepover in the museum. Seems that some people do really curious whether the collections truly awake during the night.

I found the museum getting cooler as I digging more inside. Some exhibitions that can’t be missed are:

- the amazing big blue whale in Irma and Paul Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life, 

- the dioramas in Mammal Halls, 

- wall of species in Hall of Biodiversity,

 

- the Fossil Halls, 

- and glorious display of gems and minerals in Earth and Planetary Sciences Halls.

Prepare at least 2-3 hours to visit the museum quickly and several more for thorough observation. 

After finishing your visit, just around the west corner of the building, you can go for a nice burgers in Shake Shack. I bought a tasty bacon burger called SmokeShack ($6.84) with fries ($2.99). You can find the full menu list here here.