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    UAA Planetarium and Visualization Theatre

    4.0 (1 review)

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    Anchorage Museum - Overheard screen

    Anchorage Museum

    4.4(260 reviews)
    2.8 mi

    I LOVE the Anchorage Museum. Yes compared to other large…read morecity museums it's on the smaller scale, but it's still fantastic. The Smithsonian Alaska exhibit is truly amazing, and such a great piece of history. Honestly my favorite part about the Anchorage Museum is the classes offered, the after hour events, the seed lab, the lending museum, (which is part of the seed lab) and the perks of buying a membership. There are so many cool classes offered for kids and adults and I feel like not that many people know about them. I'd encourage everyone to look up the events calendar on the website and see what they have coming up. Movie screenings, silent discos, Pink Floyd at the planetarium and then there are the member perks. They offer really cool behind the scenes tours and great discounts on classes and entry fees for members. They also offer free entrance days maybe once a month, so the price CAN be accessible to everyone.

    The Museum is located in Downtown Anchorage, across from the Anchorage Mall, with an attractive…read morearchitectural design fronted by a lovely grove of birch trees. I found it odd that the Museum's underground parking is only available to patrons at night and on weekends. Given the temps and homelessness, pushing patrons onto the street/area surface lots seemed counterintuitive. While many of the Museum's galleries offer strong, sometimes dated, points of view (i.e. on COVID vaccination rates and opinions from 2020), the Museum has a loan from the Smithsonian collection showing Alaska native cultural heritage pieces on the 2nd floor. This history alone is worth a studious and extended visit. The "dog" gallery is equally captivating, and the cafe was both welcoming and refreshing. Areas designed for children, while mostly holding our 5 & 7 year olds' interests, were fairly rudimentary without consistently clear learning goals for the well-travelled. At $25/ea for a regular adult, it's a good one-time experience.

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    Anchorage Museum - Film + Discussion: "¡Ay, Qué Bonito es Volar!" (Oh, How Beautiful It Is To Fly!)

    Film + Discussion: "¡Ay, Qué Bonito es Volar!" (Oh, How Beautiful It Is To Fly!)

    Anchorage Museum - Film + Discussion: "¡Ay, Qué Bonito es Volar!" (Oh, How Beautiful It Is To Fly!)

    Film + Discussion: "¡Ay, Qué Bonito es Volar!" (Oh, How Beautiful It Is To Fly!)

    Anchorage Museum - Film + Discussion: "¡Ay, Qué Bonito es Volar!" (Oh, How Beautiful It Is To Fly!)

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    Film + Discussion: "¡Ay, Qué Bonito es Volar!" (Oh, How Beautiful It Is To Fly!)

    Alaska Experience Theater - Our 2000sqft Banquet Hall has breathtaking views of the Port of Anchorage and the Alaska Range!

    Alaska Experience Theater

    3.2(9 reviews)
    3.0 mi

    In my Frommer's 2010 Alaska Cruises & Ports of Call guidebook, this theater is listed as being…read morefree. For our relatively short day in Anchorage, we jumped at it based on that fact. But it's not even close to free anymore, if it ever was. We ended up buying a combination ticket (one of the two 30-minute shows plus the 15-minute show about th 1964 earthquake) for $11.95 each. That sounded pretty steep for 45 minutes of edutainment, but we figured that it was worth it to get some exposure to some of the Alaskan sights that we didn't get to see from our cruise excursions. But the quality of the films was mediocre. Of the two thirty-minute films, we chose the Journey to Alaska and Northern Lights Adventure double feature, but in retrospect we should have chosen Alaska Wild! since we were interested in animals. Our film played like a 15-minute infomercial for the Alaska Tourist Bureau (I swear, "Come to Alaska" was uttered at least a dozen times in various forms) followed by a 15-minute docu-mercial about/for some photographer who specializes in shooting the aurora borealis. Don't get me wrong--the footage in both films was beautiful; it's just that the narrative content was superficial and uninteresting. And kind of awkwardly commercial. I enjoyed the earthquake film better, although it is extremely dated. However, the content was interesting and I felt that they did the subject justice in the short time frame. A seismographer explained the physics of earthquakes and the geologic situation in south-central Alaska; several eyewitnesses related unique accounts of their experiences; and original footage and photography illustrated the terror and destruction of the event. The gimmick here is that the small grandstand lurches and shakes for half a minute or so during the show, to mimic the earthquake experience. It was fun, but it didn't add much, and I was kind of annoyed that the noise of the mechanism completely drowned out the film narration during that time. The earthquake-related displays that they have in the lobby help to flesh out the story of the event and are good for killing time until your show. The people are nice and they have a small snack/gift shop...but there are probably better and/or cheaper things to do with 45 minutes in Anchorage.

    My husband and I had a great experience watching the aurora/northern lights recorded footages. It…read morefelt like we were there with the videographer, Todd. For us, it was great to see the lights in a big screen for a small fee.

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    Alaska Experience Theater - We offer fantastic rates for all events! Ask us about our catering options!

    We offer fantastic rates for all events! Ask us about our catering options!

    Alaska Experience Theater - Come see the 1964 Earthquake Experience on our hydraulic stage! It really shakes!

    Come see the 1964 Earthquake Experience on our hydraulic stage! It really shakes!

    Alaska Experience Theater - Our 96 Seat theater has the largest screen in the state!!

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    Our 96 Seat theater has the largest screen in the state!!

    UAA Planetarium and Visualization Theatre - planetarium - Updated May 2026

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