Natural History Museum

A great London museum. Tickets currently need to be pre-booked on the website and you can choose your time slot, still free to enter but you can make a donation of your choice if you desire. Actually found this booking system better than standing in the usual long queue to get in. Good variety of fantastic exhibits both fun and educational covering a lot of natural science, our 5 year old loved the dinosaurs in particular. Some of the sections that are "hands on" are naturally closed at the moment to reduce risk of multiple people touching items. There is seating available if you take food in to eat. We arrived early and were allowed to sit on the grassed area outside while we waited our time slot. Spent around 90 minutes inside.
The building itself is an architectural masterpiece and worth arriving early to look at the amazing masonry on the exterior. South Kensington Tube station is the closest and a very short walk to the museum.
Staff were doing a good job on a sweltering August day and were friendly and helpful.

Visited the Natural History Museum in London on Saturday 4th January 2020 primarily to skate on their ice rink but when we arrived there was over a two hour wait to get on the ice. Therefore we decided to go into the museum. However soon found that the queue to get in was huge, we queued for around 35mins. Once inside it was great but didn’t have sufficient time to see more than the dinosaurs. Loved the animatronic dinosaur exhibit.

We went on New Years Eve and when we got there at 9:45 the line to get in was huge already. Many exhibitions and full of information. Initially I thought that this museum would only take an hour or so but we ended up spending a good 4 hours there. T-REX grill was a good spot to have lunch but they added a dessert onto our bill which we never received. Our waiter did not appear to be attentive whereas the server on the other side was always on the lookout for her tables and conversing with them. It did get crazy busy in the museum but it was well worth it. I don’t know how busy it gets during the summer months but I would say it was quite busy throughout the morning. Dinosaur exhibit is fantastic and there were many interactive activities for children. The volcano and earthquake section was great and it is recommended that time is spent taking in each ‘zone’. I also recommend taking a bottle of water with you which you can fill up in the museum - it can get hot. Highly recommend visiting - the time is well spent!

Visited London for a long weekend so had our small case with us, security told us it had to go into the cloakroom which was fine but at a cost of £5 which we thought was a bit steep. However, we left it the whole day whilst we popped into the Science museum too, which meant we were hands free.
We visited on a Friday and the place was full of school parties which is fine if the adults in charge kept them under supervision and gave them basic rules for not running and especially not bumping into other members of the public that have equal rights to see the exhibits!
I would suggest that the museum is pitched towards younger children as descriptions were not very in depth, but still enjoyable to walk around.
There seem now to be more places to eat and have a drink which is great, we had tea and scones with clotted cream and jam, all of which was very good and not too expensive.

We visited the museum on Saturday 31st October. We booked tickets for opening at 10am and were really pleased we did as it was pretty quiet for the first 2 hours. We enjoyed looking around the varied exhibits before stopping for a spot of lunch around 12pm.

I wanted to give a specific mention to the gent with the beard who works in the cafe. He was working his absolute socks off and was extremely efficient, but still took the time to talk with all customers and was very friendly. He also looked to be training a new member of staff, talk about multi-tasking! Food was pretty fairly priced, with 2 lunches and 2 drinks coming to around £20.

When we went to carry on our visit about 12:30pm and found it was much busier. By this stage there were loads of kids running around which we expected due to half term, so at times there was little in the way of social distancing. Nonetheless staff were working hard to wipe down high touch areas and remind visitors around masks/social distancing. Overall a really enjoyable visit and we will certainly visit again when we're in the area.

BUT don't go on half term! The queues were very long from all entrances! We got there about 11.00 and we had to que for over 45 minutes to get in. Once inside, it was quite busy, and there were certain areas where you had to que again. The dinosaur area was quite disappointing, too small, narrow corridors and one way system, forcing you to get stuck in more queues! Entry is free, we contributed to voluntary donations, lots of little cafe areas inside for a quick sandwich and a drink, but quite overpriced. I would like to do it again but maybe not on school holidays. All this said, the building inside is impressive and so are some of the exhibits.

I went to The Natural History museum in London last week. I ament very interested in museums and wasn’t expecting much. The museum was free but you have to pay to see exhibitions and special tours. As soon as I walked in it was amazing. The dinosaurs were awesome, it was like being in Jurassic park! There were dinosaur bones everywhere and even fully formed dinosaur bones.
Other primary sources that I loved in the museum were animal bones (the elephant bones were interesting), fossils of animals like dinosaur fossils and hyraxes fossils and there were a number of stuffed animals that were interesting. There were also a hummingbird section which is a hit or miss but still interesting to me.
My favourite exhibition was the massive mammals. It was very interesting especially the massive blue whale. The cabinets were a hit or miss. I found them slightly boring and wouldn’t go back to that section again. The dinosaur exhibition was amazing as well it was so interesting to see the fossils and just amazing to think about them being here on this earth.
The tour was realistic and the dinosaurs, massive mammals and stuffed animals were engaging by the way they were presented them, yet the cabinets weren’t interesting and not engaging at all.
Sadly there was no video commentary. It would’ve been great if there was, it could’ve made the cabinets slightly more interesting. There was still signs giving information about the animals yet some of the information was very small and not quite readable.
I would recommend this to a friend because it’s so interesting to see and to learn about the dinosaurs that used to roam our earth. It is also interesting to see the mammals and stuffed animals and the fossils were so cool as well. I wouldn’t recommend the cabinets as they aren’t as engaging as the animals. Highly recommend. There is also a number of nice restaurants around like PierinoRestaurant Pizza Pasta.

Excellent experience throughout. We arrived just as it was opening and there was a long queue, this went down very quickly and was very well managed by staff.
Once inside the building is stunning on its own even without all the exhibits. we stayed about 4 hours and still didn't see all of it. Very educational for both children and adults and well worth a visit.
There are several food and drink outlets located throughout the museum and although they can be a bit pricey this is offset by the fact that entry to the museum is free.
Brilliant place and will be back again at some point.

This museum is free, but it’s recommended that you give a donation to the upon entry. You can do this by cash or card. It’s worth the donation, so that this remarkable place can keep providing so much fun and information to the public. This museum has it all- exhibits on dinosaurs, space, endangered/extinct species, and even gem stones. There are plenty of facilities that make doing an all day trip here quite easy- I even saw plenty of enterprising families with their own snacks, so you don’t have to worry if you don’t want to splurge on buying something from the cafe.

This is a stunning museum and always a joy to visit and spend time in. We went to the Wildlife Photography exhibition which was excellent if a bit overpriced.

Food from The Kitchen was ok with friendly service. Purchasing coffee and a cookie from the Central Cafe later in the day was an ordeal with abysmal service and the cookie cost £2.65 which seems a bit excessive for a biscuit! If we come again we’ll bring a picnic.

There are lots of things to see here and I first visited over thirty five years ago so it’s always like a trip down memory lane. Some of the exhibits could do with updating though - children of today don’t have patience with very slow electronics even if they were cutting edge on my first visit!!

The building is wonderful though and I could spend hours just looking at the architecture!

Still worth a visit - and so special that it is free to enter.