WonderWorks Orlando, December 2024

We didn’t just spend our entire week in Orlando at Universal parks. We left one day free to do some other things.

On our park-free Wednesday, we went down to International Drive to do some things we hadn’t done in a while. Take a trip on the Iride trolley and visit the home of the best pizza buffet we’ve ever had: Cici’s. Plus, we did a few things that were new to us. The first of which was visiting WonderWorks.

Yes, this was our first visit to ‘The Upside-down House’ that is WonderWorks, and it was a welcome break from the parks. We had a ticket included with our Universal Studios bundle and we were glad we used it.

The best I can describe it, WonderWorks is 3 levels of fun and games, rope courses, laser tag, science experiments and more. Rooms full of unusual things to try, all set in a building designed to be upside down. If the story is true, it’s upside down due to a science experiment gone wrong! We’ve seen WonderWorks many times in passing, but never been in.

After checking in, at reception we were give the option to buy an arcade pass with $8 of credit to use on the arcade floor, which also came with a ‘case book’ for the kids (sort of a treasure hunt) which gave a prize at the end, all for $11.

Checking online, the standard entry price for WonderWorks is $37 for adults, $28 for children. Basic tickets get access to all the experiments, plus laser tag and the rope course,4D cinema, rollercoaster simulator and gyroscope.

You enter into the first area of WonderWorks via a spinning tunnel, which was hilarious. All four of us were walking into the railings while trying to walk in a straight line. Lots of fun, very confusing!

Lots of fun experiments in here, including:

• Tesla Coil – Wear a metal glove and watch electricity dancing on your fingertips. You think you’re going to get a shock, but you don’t.
• Earthquake Café – Sit in a café booth while it shakes like a 5.9 Richter measuring quake.
• Hurricane Shack – We loved this. Stand inside the shack and get pummelled by 74mph winds.
• Cold Water Test – See how long you can hold your hand in 28°F (-2.22°C) water. I managed 10 seconds before it started really hurting.
• Anti-Gravity Room – A trick of the light that makes it look like water is flowing upward.

More crazy experiments in here, these to test the body.

• Bed of Nails – Yes, really, a bed of nails, and we all had a go (except Elliott). It feels weird, but it’s not every day you get to try a bed of nails.
• Speed of Light Machine – Spot the lights and hit them to switch them off. See how many you can do in 30 seconds.
• Giant Pin Art – Classic office desk pin, only big enough to put your whole body in to make pin shapes.
• Arcade Game – A host of games where instead of shooting with a laser, you throw balls at the screen. We’d be rubbish in a Zombie apocalypse if we had to throw tennis balls at them!
• Bubble Lab – different sized hoops and items to make bubbles big enough for you to stand in.

Science and entertainment through the medium of light and sound.

• Giant Piano – A giant floor piano like the one in the Tom Hanks film ‘Big’.
• Memory Sequencer – Remember the patterns and press the buttons.
• Recollections – Turns your shadow into a dancing lightshow
• Strike a Pose – A flash of light leaves and impression of your shadow on the wall for you to see!
• Doodle It – Drawing with light

An area designed to allow you to interact and change the experiments for different outcomes, including:

• Wonder Brite – A giant Lite Brite machine you can create pictures on with illuminated coloured pieces.
• Dig It Sandbox – An interactive sandpit with a projector overhead, that changes the landscape depending on the depth or height of the sand, with dinosaurs roaming. Dig deep for water or mount it higher for a volcano.
• Alien Stomp Game – live a video screen whack a mole, but you get to stomp on aliens.

This area had replica lunar landers you could sit in, an astronaut’s space suit you could put your face in for a picture, Shuttle Lander and flights simulator games and more. It also had 2 stand out features:

They strap you into the cockpit box and send you on a virtual rollercoaster experience. And yes, it moves a lot and goes upside down. It has easy, medium and hard modes, which we skipped easy and went for medium and hard. I don’t usually get nauseous on coasters, but this knocked me a bit.

It’s a gyroscope. One of those free spinning balls that you sit in and spin every which way possible. Me and Evan really wanted to try this, but we didn’t meet the weight requirement to balance it, so had to pass. We’ll have to come again when he weighs more! We did see some other kids on it, and they were screaming, so it must have been fun, right?

There were plenty of other experiments and fun things that we passed in these rooms, a Pulley Climbing frame, virtual sports, drawing with lights, TV trivia machines, Palaeontology section with dino info, VR shark machine. One of the more fun rooms allowed you to design and colour a hot air balloon or plane, name it and launch. It would then take off and fly above the virtual city projected on the wall.

Upwards to the basement…

The top level (or bottom, we’re upside down now, remember?) is home to the arcade room, Laser Tag, 4D XD Cinema and Rope Course.

• Arcade – A bog standard arcade with claw machines, and games.
• 4D XD Cinema – It looks a bit dated but was still fun. There are 3 different experiences: Dino Safari, Canyon Coaster and Wild West Mine Ride. We Chose Dino Safari. You’re on a moving seat with 3D glasses, getting buffeted around as you escape marauding Spinosaurus in your jeep.
• Laser Tag – 6-minutes of free-for-all laser tag action. It’s a small, dark area with several obstacles to hide behind, but was lots of fun. There was only the four of us there, so we had the whole room to navigate. Evan won!
• Glow in the Dark Rope Course – It is a proper rope course above your head in the Arcade room. You get harnessed up and attached to the frame, then get sent up to the rafters for 10 minutes to explore all the obstacles, rope bridges, stepping blocks and nets. I’m not great with heights, so was pretty cautious – and a bit wobbly. Evan was flying though them! Great fun. Not suitable for anyone under 42”

There are lockers available in the arcade room as you can’t take them on the rope course or laser tag. They cost $3 for a few hours.

Along the staircases and at different points through the building, you could find some of the mind-boggling artworks and sculptures. Illusion art with faces made of fruit, versions of the Escher stairs picture, are the birds in or out of the cage, a portrait of a dog made of other animal pictures. That kind of thing.

There was also an exhibit of Dr Seuss’s Unorthodox Taxidermy, where he’d made crazy animals from the horns and antlers of real animals!

After we’d experienced all of the games and activities, we headed back down (up? down?) to find the café and gift shop.

We didn’t eat at the Wonder Bytes Café, but it was a decent sized room, serving pizza, burgers & combos, hot dogs, snacks and sides, sweet treats and drinks. Prices looked good too. $8.25 for a hot dog meal, burger meal for $12.99 and whole pizza from $15.

The gift shop – the Wonder Shop – was mainly generic toys and things you could find elsewhere: spaceships, rocks & crystals, some t-shirts, random Lego items, personalised mugs and such. It did have a selection of WonderWorks souvenirs too like glasses, magnets, tees and more. So, as we do, we picked up a magnet for the fridge.

We really enjoyed our time at WonderWorks Orlando, it was something different to try and the kids had lots for fun doing some of the odd and fun things that you wouldn’t normally get to do, and so did we as adults. It’s a unique experience, worth visiting if you’ve never been before. We were glad we had the ticket included with our package, as I’m not sure we have come along if we’d had to pay out another $130 for 4 people in what is already an expensive holiday. And whilst $130 seems expensive, we are at an attraction in the middle of Orlando, so it’s not that bad. Worth thinking about and planning in before your trip.

Regardless, we spent half our day at WonderWorks having fun, but you could easily spend a whole day here as there is so much to see and do.

Next, we were off for lunch at Cici’s Pizza, then all aboard for a trip to Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition.

Find all the information on events, tickets and crazy antics over at the WonderWorks Orlando Website