Puzzling World: Wanaka Travel Guide (4.5★)

A tower that looks like it’s falling

The building at the gate is leaning badly, and it’s meant to. The Leaning Tower of Wanaka tilts out over the car park at an angle that makes first-timers pull over and stare. A clock face sits askew on top. Most people take their first photo before they’ve even switched off the engine.

That tower sets the tone for everything behind it. Puzzling World started in 1973 as a single maze on the edge of Wanaka. It has since grown into a compound of illusion rooms, a puzzle café and a shop. It’s one of the most-reviewed attractions in the Southern Lakes and is consistently well rated, so expect company.

Inside The Great Maze

The maze is the original reason the place exists. It’s a timber labyrinth with roughly 1.5 km of passages and wooden walls taller than your head. Overhead bridges connect the sections, so you’re never sure if you’re going forward or doubling back over your own route.

The goal isn’t just to get out. A coloured tower stands in each corner, and the full challenge is to reach all four before finding the exit. There’s an easier version that only asks for the towers in any order. Most people spend somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour inside.

If you’re getting nowhere, look for the emergency exit doors along the route. They let tired children (and adults) slip out without walking all the way back. There’s no shame in using them. Plenty of groups split up, with one stubborn person staying in to finish.

The illusion rooms, room by room

The indoor half is a sequence of rooms you walk through in order. Each one fools a different part of your brain. These are the ones people talk about afterwards:

• Hall of Following Faces: a wall of sculpted faces of famous people whose eyes seem to track you across the room.
• Ames Room: stand in one corner and you look like a giant; your friend in the other corner shrinks.
• Tilted House: the whole room is built on a slant, so balls appear to roll uphill and your legs argue with your eyes.
• Hologram Hall: images that shift and change as you walk past them.

The Tilted House is the one to take slowly. Some visitors feel genuinely queasy in it, and it’s normal to grab a rail. Allow 45 minutes to an hour for the rooms if you read the signs and try the hands-on puzzles along the way.

The Roman toilets

Yes, you should look at the toilets. The bathrooms are decorated as Roman-style latrines, with painted murals that play tricks on you as soon as you walk in. It’s become one of the place’s running jokes, and people really do photograph them.

It’s a small thing, but it’s typical of how Puzzling World works. The illusions aren’t only in the ticketed rooms. They’re on the walls, in the corridors, at the gate. Keep looking around between the main exhibits.

Puzzles at the café table

The café is free to enter, and the puzzles come with it. Every table has wooden brain-teasers on it: interlocking shapes, rings to separate, blocks that won’t go back in their box. You’ll see whole families ignoring their food to argue over one piece.

It’s a good spot to rest between the maze and the rooms, especially with kids. The shop next door sells many of the same puzzles, plus a wider range of games and gifts. If one of them has beaten you over lunch, you can take it home and keep losing.

Beating the maze and the rainy-day rush

Puzzling World is well known, not a quiet find, so a little planning helps. A few things that make the visit smoother:

• Do the maze first. It’s outdoors and the most tiring part. Get it done while you have energy, then go inside for the rooms.
• Mind the weather. The maze is open to the sky, so pack a jacket. When it rains in Wanaka, everyone suddenly wants an indoor plan, and the illusion rooms get busier as a result.
• Arrive early or come later. Opening is currently 9am. Turning up then usually beats the families and tour groups who come after a morning on the lake.
• Pick your ticket at the desk. You can usually choose the maze, the illusion rooms or both. Current options and prices are posted at the entrance and on the official website.
• Paying is easy. Cards and EFTPOS are standard in New Zealand. Tipping at the café isn’t expected.

Last entry before the 5pm close comes around fast, so don’t plan to arrive late in the afternoon. You’d have to rush both halves.

Getting there and what’s nearby

The address is 188 Wanaka-Luggate Highway, about 2 km from the lakefront heading east towards Luggate and Wanaka Airport. Driving from town takes a few minutes, and there’s a car park on site. Walking from the town centre takes roughly 25–30 minutes on footpaths beside the highway.

It’s easy to fit into a day around Lake Wānaka:

• That Wanaka Tree: the willow standing in the water near the Wanaka Station Park end of town, best seen early in the day.
• Roys Peak: the big hike above the lake, for days when your legs aren’t already tired from the maze.
• Warbirds & Wheels and the National Transport and Toy Museum: further along the same highway near the airport, a natural add-on for a rainy day.

Queenstown is about an hour’s drive over the Crown Range. Plenty of visitors stop at Puzzling World on their way in or out of town.