Illusion rooms and the two-storey Great Maze just outside Wanaka, an hour and a quarter from Queenstown. Combo tickets $32.50 adult, $23.50 child.
Puzzling World sits on the Wanaka-Luggate highway a couple of kilometres out of Wanaka, about an hour and a quarter's drive from Queenstown. It started as a maze in the 1970s and grew outwards; the Leaning Tower on the corner of the car park is the bit everyone photographs on the way in.
There are two things to do here, and you can buy them together or separately.
The Great Maze was the first of the modern great mazes — two storeys, 1.5km of passages, and corner towers to find before you work your way back out. Allow an hour, or longer if you are stubborn about it.
The Illusion Rooms are six rooms of optical trickery: the tilted room where people appear to change size as they cross it, holograms, and a wall of faces that follow you around. There is a café and a shop at the end.
It holds children for most of an afternoon, which makes it a reliable answer to a wet day in the Upper Clutha.
Practical detail
- Open: every day from 9am, last admission 4.30pm; closed Christmas Day
- Tickets: combo $32.50 adult, $23.50 child (5 to 15); illusion rooms only $26.50 and $20; maze only $22 and $18; family combo for two adults and two children $99
- Getting there: two kilometres from Wanaka on State Highway 84, signposted, with its own car park
Prices checked September 2026 and held by the operator until 31 March 2027.
