Recently, in a will to do something a little different I booked Alex and I tickets to Ripleys Believe It or Not.
Neither of us had ever been to any of the locations, even though Alex has lived in London his WHOLE life apart from his university years, and so I thought it could be pretty fun. I needed something to look forward to on my weekend too with work being crazily busy, and a plan like this was just what I needed – I keep telling myself I can’t spend my whole life at the gym :P
I booked online on the friday for evening tickets for the following day, these let you go along any time after 5pm and even include saturdays. The evening tickets are great as there are no set times, such as hourly entries, you just go when suits with last entry being 10.30pm. All tickets get the mirror maze and laserace included too! They are also a bargain if you book online – tickets on the door were £26.95, but if you book online you get at least 15% discount with evening saver tickets only costing £16.95. Tickets are then sent via e-mail, which can be printed or presented on smart phone when entering.
We got to Ripley’s at about 6.30pm ish and the queue wasn’t long at all. There are models and creations in the front reception too, one big transformer type model by the entrance – I wish I’d got a photo with this! We had our tickets scanned from my phone and headed up to floor 5 in the lift as instructed to start our tour.
I wasn’t sure what to expect but was a pretty excited to explore!
We got to the top floor and started our expedition around the halls of the weird and wonderful. We passed works of art made from all sorts of materials – bottle tops, stamps and toast…
…ornaments and relics from different eras, a corner on animals (models of some of the weirdest on the planet – animals with extra limbs and such – a bit freaky to think these existed) and a moving dinosaur – Yes, I did get scared haha Alex was laughing at me so much! I don’t know what about the Dinosaur freaked me out. I think I was imagining it coming to life haha
I loved this part – A model of the tallest man with Alex stood next to him…I don’t think Alex has much hope in catching him up :P
There was so much to look at, take in and explore that I must admit I got a little side-tracked in my masses of intrigue that I abandoned taking photos – I know silly me!
Half way through Ripleys you get to go through the Mirror Maze, there are arrows to this directing you downstairs. It was fab! All dark and only the lights around the mirrors. They advise you not to run and to walk with arms out – Obvious rules but I can imagine people forgetting. It was really cool. Alex tried to race off so I would get lost…I think I’ve watched too many horror films and I did get a little spooked when the film mirrors came to mind.
At the end you also get to do the Laserace which is downstairs from the gift shop. There’s a small queue to wait your turn but it goes pretty quickly. You enter in your group, Alex and I went in as our 2, and you select your difficulty which Alex selected hard! Seriously?
You have to make your way across the room to place your hands on the yellow hand prints before making your way to the exit. The system counts the numbers of lasers broken and time so you can see on the way out. They also have a score board. We didn’t actually do that well – I blame the carrying of bags and big coats to be warm in the winter :P
Overall it was such a fun evening. It was great to do something a little different at the weekend and we really enjoyed seeing all the weird and wacky collections from around the world. Personally my fave was the artworks – but I’m a sucker for things like that, just amazing!
Chloe xx
