Bochnia Salt Mine — Attraction in Bochnia

Interesting place to visit. The first hour was the most interesting, and the place has a cheesy way of presenting what they teach about the mine: With hilariously acted videos on screens and weird puppets. It was informative but also led to a lot of giggles from the group I was with. It was annoying that the first part of the trip after being led down into the mine was mostly a "walk to another screen or scene and see some actor pretend to be a famous king" but it was alright. There was a section where you're led up a bunch of stairs to be shown some very interesting markings and remnants of the work being done in the mines, and being a tall person I had no issues on the way up; Heading down from this part was another story. The stairs were not built with much clearance which required me to duck (understandable) but I wish there was a warning that I might need to watch out for smacking my head that way. After going down that part, you're led to a giant ramp with "stairs" (wooden slats stuck into the ground, not flat) that lead down into the Ważyn chamber, which is a really cool thing to see. On our tour, they advertized the fact you can pay to stay down in the chamber on some bunk beds, then we were led down a very, very long set of corridors for the boat ride, which was massively underwhelming. You walk forever to get to it, you wait a long time, and then it ends up being a 2 minute ride through a part of a cavern they explain they intentionally flood and keep having to fill, meaning the whole thing is just for tourism. After that, they brought the group back to the Ważyn chamber, where they give you 45 minutes to buy food from the Cafeteria and gifts at the Gift Shop. While it's nice to have a break, basically being forced to stay underground in the mine, after 2 hours of the tour, with "conveniently placed" food and drink feels like a really cheap business tactic. Overall it was very interesting, but I heard from someone else in my group that the Wieliczka Mine is more interesting overall. Probably won't...

(Posted because 10 days no answer on e-mail) ! We are very unhappy that there was a mandatory break/lunch in the mine. It was placed right towards the end of the tour which means, that after the 40minutes break, we were being brought up to the surface again. We believe that the mandatory break was added only in order to force people to purchase food from the cantine inside the mine, which was some of the baddest tasting and most exspensive food that I have ever bought. 10zl for 100g of food meant we would have to pay more than 90zl just to get a little food and a drink. Also the souvenir shop inside the mine further indicates, that the 40min mandatory break was added only to force the consumer to make purchases inside the mine, where you are basically "trapped" untill the 40min have passed, because there was also a souvenir shop when we came out of the mine.

Besides that, we were a fairly big group and there were constantly issues with the audio. I believe that sensors were supposed to make the audio device start each time you arrive at a special place, but because we were such a big group, it sometimes did not register correctly.

We are also unhappy that there was constantly waiting time for several minutes where we were just stranding and waiting for other groups.

Overall we are not satisfied that this fairly exspensive tour has done the price justice.

We are also unhappy that the slide was not working so we had to walk many...

We visited Bochnia as we had already been to the ever more popular and far busier, Wieliczka Salt Mine twice in 2018 & 2019...In our opinion, myself, wife and 17 year old son, Bochnia is the Better of the two. I only stumbled across the place after an extensive search around Google maps for places to visit other than what the tour company's were offering. The tour itself is excellent and well thought out as it doesn't just have a start to finish line as you go back on yourself here and there and within that, the little train/tram thing and boat ride along with video presentations keeps it always interesting and informative and because the tour places ain't really advertising this as much, the guide is never rushed, you don't wait for tour in front to move on or tour from behind pushing you on. Getting there is as simple as a 25 minute train ride from Kraków Glowny with about a 20min walk direct or a stroll through town which took us about an hour. We booked our tickets online and were involved in a native language tour but were given headsets set to English which worked very well and even though our guide pretty much knew we couldn't understand what he was saying, we always felt a part of it as guide looked in our direction as well as his locals. Top marks to the Guy!! We intend to visit again the next time we come to Kraków, hopefully in 2026!! Thanks to all at Bochnia. Kind...