Australian Museum of Magical Arts — Attraction in Sydney

Australian Museum of Magical Arts

I booked a tour with my two young daughters (8 and 12) on a recent trip to Sydney. I loved it! James (the guide) was fantastic. He has a great personal history with magic and shares his love for this art and the history behind it.

What I didn't realize is how much I personally would love it since I haven't been very excited about magic since I was my kids' age. But I loved hearing the secrets behind some of the most iconic acts performed... seeing the props and how they work... touching the props... standing on stage, etc.

At the end of our tour, James showed my daughters how to do a great card trick.

His stories were fascinating and funny.

Here's what could have been a little bit better:

Even though the minimum amount of lighting properly set the mood, it did make some of the tour hard to fully appreciate. And my daughters kept looking at me as if to say "Is this OK or is my anxiety justified?". There's nothing scary about James or the setting... but they're young girls in a new place, with low lighting, and someone they just met.

My daughters had not previously seen a stage show. If I'd known what kind of magic tricks were going to be revealed I would have made sure to show them a YouTube clip or two of stage magic such as a woman getting sawed in half or an assistant transforming into a tiger and then reappearing in the audience. But without that context, their young minds weren't as "blown" as mine was. They still enjoyed it... but if you see the secret before you've seen the trick, you don't have the same WOW moment.

I found the location a bit hard to find, even with Google maps, but maybe that's because I'm new to Sydney.

But even with those slight negatives... I give this five starts.

If you were ever fascinated by magic (even as a child) or if you would like to see behind the scenes and know how some of the magic is really done then you'll...

We went as a family of 4 (2 children, 4 and 7). It was rather underwhelming.

We were on time but the place was locked and we had to wait 5 minutes before James came out.

James showed us props of various magic tricks and explained the psychology behind magic. That was rather good. However his energy was rather low and we were interrupted several times by phone calls.

It would have been more interesting if the tricks were demonstrated first before the tricks were revealed. So if you're going, would be good to watch some of these tricks online first (sawing a person in half, turning girl into tiger etc.). James only performed two tricks for us - a card trick and a ball/cup trick, so if you expect a show, you'll be sorely disappointed like I was.

The tour was slightly less than an hour for us. Overall, it felt like perhaps James was distracted that day and didn't give his best. A tour that was full of potential but at the end felt like it had...

It was a fairly disappointing experience for a range of reasons. The general up keep of the venue left a bit to be desired, the dust was pretty bad as was the and smell of animal waste in places. However the most cringe worthy was the host. The level of racist, sexist, ableist, ignorant and uninformed commentary was really disturbing, not to mention the factually inaccurate information given as part of the tour. I understand it was delivered by an entertainer and not someone trained in education or research or academics, but if you're selling the idea of the history of magicians you should really put in some effort to actually get it right. Incredibly disappointing.

*21/09/2019 - Today the owner has privately message me on facebook to threaten me with legal action and send me screen shots of my private page in order to threaten and intimidate me into deleting or changing the review of...