We woke up early and headed for Puzzling World, one of Wanaka’s most famous and delightfully odd attractions. Out front, the Leaning Tower of Wanaka tips at a mind-bending 53 degrees more than ten times the tilt of Pisa’s! Balanced on one corner, it’s both impossible-looking and completely photo-perfect.
Naturally, we did the classic poses Georgia “pushing” it upright, Ali doing her best superhero squat. Instant giggles before we’d even bought the tickets.
The Tilted House: Five-Pint Physics and Dizzy Laughter
First stop inside: the Tilted House. It’s a 15-degree slant, but everything inside is built to make your eyes think it’s level so your brain basically short-circuits.
Ali walked in like she’d had five pints before breakfast, laughing so hard she had to hang onto the rail. Even standing still felt wrong gravity goes sideways, water runs uphill, and the world just stops behaving. Georgia thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen.
It’s a weird and wonderful reminder that your brain isn’t always the boss.
Then we found the Sliding Chair Illusion and Georgia couldn’t get enough of it. You sit at the bottom of a ramp, give yourself a push, and somehow… slide uphill.
Ali was crying with laughter, Dotty was clapping, and Georgia looked absolutely amazed. The trick lies in the design the track is level, but the room is built off-kilter. Your eyes tell your brain gravity’s gone on strike.
You can actually feel your balance shifting as you ride it. Simple, genius, and impossible not to laugh at and it makes you dizzy when it comes to a stop and you try and walk back down sideways!
Next came the Ames Room, where the laws of perspective play a sneaky trick one side looks like it’s miles away, the other feels close, but it’s actually all warped geometry.
Georgia stood on one side towering like a giant, while Dotty looked about knee-high. Swap sides and boom instant size change. You could spend half an hour in there swapping, laughing, and trying to work out how it’s done.
Fun Fact: The illusion is based on early experiments in perception psychology the same optical principle that’s used in theme park “gravity rooms.”
The Hall of Holograms is a wall of faces that move when you do, and the Infinity Lights Room is pure magic thousands of tiny lights that stretch endlessly in every direction.
Then came the big one the Great Maze. It’s one of the world’s first 3D wooden mazes, built in 1973, stretching across 1.5 kilometres of bridges, tunnels, and looping walkways.
We decided to make it interesting: Me and Dotty vs Ali and Georgia.
The race was on.
We started behind wrong turns, dead ends, the usual but then found a sneaky bridge and suddenly pulled 3–2 in the lead. That’s when things went wrong.
We couldn’t find the green tower. We looped around, again and again, until we were dizzy from déjà vu. Dotty started getting tired, and my sense of direction turned to soup.
Meanwhile, Ali and Georgia had found all four towers but couldn’t find the exit. They’d been wandering for 20 minutes by that point.
Eventually, Dotty and I stumbled in the exit which, by the way, felt like defeat and relief in equal measure. Ali and Georgia saw us and I shouted we couldn’t find the green tower, she shouted back they cannot get to the exit!so they took the emergency exit.
So technically no one won but as a team, we conquered the whole maze. An hour of wrong turns, laughter, and pure family chaos.
After the maze, we headed into Wanaka’s shopping centre for Subway lunch and picked up waterproof leggings, jumpers, and coats for the girls. South Island weather can turn on a dime, so we were glad to be stocked up.
Then we stopped by the dinosaur playground a colourful park with a big red-and-blue dino slide. Dotty zoomed down it on repeat while Georgia took on playground patrol duty.
We finished the afternoon searching for That Wanaka Tree, the famous lone willow growing out of the lake. After a few laps of the shore, we admitted defeat, maybe next time.
Puzzling World Wanaka is one of those places that gets everyone grinning clever enough to impress adults, chaotic enough to delight kids. Ali staggering through the Tilted House to Georgia conquering the uphill chair and our epic (and chaotic) family maze race, it was pure fun from start to finish.
If you’re travelling through New Zealand’s South Island, Puzzling World is a must. Expect laughter, confusion, and the best kind of family competition.
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