Puzzling World is a great place to spend and hour or two, and I'm really glad that we stopped. Both Maria and I are big puzzle fans so it seemed like an obvious choice. Puzzling World is located outside of Wanaka on Highway 1. Next to the front entrance is the leaning tower of Wanka, which is tilted at an angle 10 times that of the leaning tower of Pisa. Inside they have a large sitting room with several tables and each table has a number of puzzles like those you would find in your neighborhood toy store. Maria and I tried several, including trying to remove an incredibly annoying string that was fed through several loops. There were plenty of little children who appeared to be having no problem with the puzzles they were engaged with, so we gave up and decided to head inside. Puzzling World has two main attractions, and optical illusions room, and a giant maze. We went for the illusions first. There were several different illusions inhabiting several different rooms. There were holograms and faces that followed you. There were several paintings of impossible objects and even a room that appeared to defy gravity (the floor in the room was tilted so one's visual perception was off, it made for almost instantaneous nausea and Maria didn't make it all the way through). By far the most entertaining illusion was the uneven room. The ceiling of the room was tapered so that one end was taller, probably close to seven or eight feet, and the other end of the room was shorter. As you walked from one end to the other you appeared to either greatly increase in size, or to shrink rapidly. There was a camera set up that showed your experience on a TV several minutes after you'd been in the room, so you could see what you looked like after the fact. Next was the maze, which wasn't as exciting as we were hoping (especially since we had been expecting to stop at the local brewery before Puzzling World, unfortunately they had closed early). We walked through most of it, and Maria cheated a few times because she could easily fit under the wall. I didn't want to cheat but not wanting to get left behind, I joined her. We watched little kids run themselves, and their parents, ragged trying to touch each colored corner. In the end we just ducked out the emergency exit and headed back to our car.
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