Two Quirky Museums: AMAZE and Upside Down

The bass drops, the soundtrack swells, and the mirrored room around you fractures into a thousand reflected versions of itself. I was standing in the centre of the AMAZE infinity-mirror chamber when the climax hit, my reflection multiplied to infinity in synchronised pulses of light. For about ninety seconds I forgot which way was up.

That’s AMAZE on a good night. Across town at The Upside Down, the vibe is different but the photos are wilder. Two completely separate Amsterdam venues, often confused for each other online, both worth knowing how to book.

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Two Different Venues. Don’t Mix Them Up.

This is the single thing that confuses everyone. The Upside Down and AMAZE are not the same place, and they are not the same kind of experience.

The Upside Down sits at Heiligeweg 2, right near the Singel canal and the Bloemenmarkt. It’s a photo museum. About 25 themed rooms where furniture is bolted to the ceiling, kitchens hover overhead, neon tunnels pulse, and a voice-activated LED ball pit reacts when you scream. You walk in, you flip your phone, and the photos look like you’re hanging from the rafters. It’s playful. It’s loud. Kids and groups love it.

AMAZE is on Hobbemastraat 18, on Museumplein, a short walk from the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh. It’s an immersive audiovisual experience, and the format is completely different. Eight themed chambers. You pick up wireless headphones at the entrance. Each room has its own composition, written by international light artists, and you move through them at your own pace. Some chambers are quiet and meditative. Others are full-on club-grade light shows. It was built by ID&T, the Dutch dance-music collective behind Sensation and Tomorrowland, so the sound design is on a different level to most museums.

The simplest way to think about it: Upside Down is for the camera roll. AMAZE is for the headspace. If you only have time for one, that line should make the choice obvious.

Upside Down Amsterdam: How the Visit Actually Works

You’ll book a timed slot, usually in 30-minute windows from late morning through to about 9 pm. Last entry is roughly an hour before close, so don’t show up at 8:50 expecting to wander. The whole thing takes most people 60 to 90 minutes. Photographers and big groups stretch it past two hours.

Inside, you start with a quick host briefing on which way to hold your phone in each room. They’ll point out which props you can climb on, which you cannot, and where the best lighting falls. Then you go room by room at your own pace.

The rooms I remember best: the kitchen with the table screwed into the ceiling and cereal boxes hanging upside down (rotate your shot 180 degrees and you look like Spider-Man eating breakfast), the silent disco room where the disco ball is on the floor and you dance with headphones on, and the LED ball pit that changes colour when you yell into it. The neon-tunnel corridor between rooms is also a small thing the website doesn’t mention, but it’s the cleanest portrait shot in the building.

One thing that genuinely surprised me: the included QR-code photo download. At the end of the visit you get a code, and it pulls every staff-shot photo taken of your group. They have a dedicated photographer in two of the rooms (the kitchen and the floating-bed room) and the framing is much better than what your friend with shaky hands will manage. That’s where the ticket actually earns its keep.

Skip this if you’re allergic to crowds. On weekends and rainy afternoons it’s chaotic, and the queues for the most photogenic rooms can stretch ten minutes. Weekday morning slots, especially the first one of the day, are dramatically calmer. That’s when I’d go.

AMAZE Amsterdam: A Different Kind of Trip

AMAZE asks more of you. The minimum visit is around 50 minutes, and most people take 75 to 90. You collect headphones at the start, and they auto-trigger the audio for each chamber as you walk in. No phone-flipping. No Instagram corners. The lighting in most rooms is too low for a clean phone shot anyway.

The chambers rotate every twelve months or so, but the structure stays similar. There’s always an opening room that warms you up gently, then progressively heavier rooms in the middle, and a calm closing chamber to land you back in the world. The infinity-mirror room and the laser-tunnel chamber are the ones people talk about afterwards. The infinity room sits roughly two-thirds through, so you peak before you exit.

Solo visitors and couples get the most out of AMAZE. Big groups and kids under about ten tend to break the spell. The rooms are designed for you to stand still and absorb, not for everyone to fan out and shout to each other. If you’re with a young family, do the Upside Down first. Save AMAZE for a date or a solo afternoon.

You can buy a combination AMAZE plus Moco Museum ticket on the venue’s own site, and it’s worth a glance if you’ve got a half-day on Museumplein and don’t already have Rijks or Van Gogh booked. Moco is fifteen minutes’ walk and the two complement each other better than you’d guess. Our full Moco guide goes deeper on that one.

Picking Your Upside Down Tickets

Ticket options are messier than they should be. There are two near-identical Upside Down listings on GetYourGuide and Viator, and the venue itself sells direct. Prices float a bit.

1. Upside Down Experience Entrance Ticket: about $30

This is the most-booked Upside Down ticket on the GYG marketplace by a wide margin. Standard timed entry, all 25 themed rooms, QR photo download included. Our full review covers what to expect from each room and how the staff photographer set-up actually works.

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2. The Upside Down Museum Entrance Ticket: about $24

This is technically a separate GYG product page for the same Heiligeweg venue. It often shows up cheaper than the flagship by a few euros, with the same room-by-room access and the same QR photo download. Our take on the alt listing walks through when it’s worth grabbing instead.

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Picking Your AMAZE Tickets

AMAZE is simpler. Two main listings, plus a combi-ticket with Moco that the venue runs direct.

1. AMAZE Immersive Audiovisual Experience: about $23

Standard timed entry to all eight chambers, headphones included, average visit of around 75 minutes. Our full AMAZE walkthrough goes chamber-by-chamber on what’s currently installed and which ones to take your time in.

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2. AMAZE Immersive Audiovisual Experience Ticket (alt): about $26

Same venue, same chambers, same headphones, slightly higher list price. Worth knowing about as a backup when the cheaper listing is sold out for your slot. The full alt-listing review compares the two side by side and explains when to pick which.

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Getting There

Both venues are dead easy to reach.

Upside Down (Heiligeweg 2): 10 minutes’ walk from Centraal Station, or one stop on tram 2 or 12 to Koningsplein. The street itself is a short pedestrian alley running between Singel and Kalverstraat. Don’t trust your map app to flag the entrance accurately. The signage is small. Look for the people queueing with phones out.

AMAZE (Hobbemastraat 18): tram 2 or 12 to Rijksmuseum, then about three minutes on foot. Or 15 minutes’ walk south through the canal ring from Centraal. If you’re already on Museumplein for Rijks or Van Gogh, you’ll basically walk past the door.

Best Times to Go

For the Upside Down, weekday mornings are the answer. The first two slots of the day, when school groups are still in school and tourists are still eating breakfast, get you the rooms practically empty. Saturdays after 2 pm are the worst slot of the week.

For AMAZE, late weekday afternoons hit a sweet spot. The 4 pm and 5 pm slots tend to thin out, and you’ll move through the chambers without bunching up behind a slow group. Friday evenings get a bit louder. Sunday mornings are also quiet but the soundtracks feel mellower than they should at 10 am.

Combining Both in One Day

You can absolutely do both venues in a single afternoon. They’re about 25 minutes apart on foot, or 10 minutes by tram. My order: Upside Down at 11 am (loud, energetic, photo-heavy), lunch on Spiegelgracht, then AMAZE at 2 pm or 3 pm (quiet, immersive, gives your eyes and your phone a break).

Doing them in the reverse order works too, but you’ll find the Upside Down feels much more shouty after the headphones-on calm of AMAZE. I’d save the calm for last.

What to Wear, What to Bring

Wear colour to the Upside Down. Neon, white, anything that pops against dark walls. Plain black flattens out and you’ll vanish in half your photos. Comfortable shoes for both. There’s a fair bit of standing.

For AMAZE, bring nothing you don’t need. There are no lockers in the chambers themselves. Phones are fine but you mostly won’t use them. Don’t wear strong perfume. The chambers are small and badly ventilated for scent.

Both venues are wheelchair accessible at ground floor, with some caveats at Upside Down for the ball-pit room. Email ahead if access matters.

Cancellation, Refunds, and Stuff That Annoys People

GYG bookings on both venues come with free cancellation up to 24 hours before, which is the version I’d always pick. The cheaper non-refundable listings save you a couple of euros and aren’t worth the rigidity, especially given Amsterdam’s weather can flip your plans on the day.

Re-entry isn’t allowed at either venue. Once you exit, you’re out. Plan a bathroom stop and a phone-charge before you walk in.

Heads up on Upside Down weekend pricing: the venue runs surge prices on Saturday afternoons. Booking in advance for a Saturday off-peak slot saves more than you’d think.

The History Bit (For AMAZE)

AMAZE didn’t come out of nowhere. ID&T, the Dutch dance-music collective behind it, has been running massive events since 1992. Sensation White, Mysteryland, Tomorrowland (yes, the Belgian giant grew out of an ID&T side project) all came out of that operation. The company spent thirty years figuring out how to wire light, sound, and crowd movement together at festival scale.

The venue opened on Hobbemastraat in 2021. They commission new installations from international light artists every six to twelve months, so the chambers you walk through this year are not the same chambers your friend visited last year. That rotation is what stops it feeling like a one-and-done. I’ve been twice with completely different rooms each time.

The Verdict

If you’re travelling with kids, with a group, or you just want a fun hour and a phone full of photos: book the Upside Down. It does what it says, the QR photo system actually works, and you’ll come out laughing.

If you want something closer to an art experience, book AMAZE. It’s not perfect. Chamber three on my last visit dragged, and the laser room can give you a mild headache if you’re sensitive to strobe. The infinity-mirror moment alone is worth the ticket though. Solo or with one other person is the right way.

If you can do both, do both. They’re cheap by Amsterdam museum standards (Rijks is more than double the price of either) and the contrast between them makes each one land harder.

Other Quirky Amsterdam Things Worth a Look

If photo-museums and immersive light shows are your thing, Amsterdam has a few more in the same genre. Moco Museum sits on Museumplein with AMAZE and leans modern-art-meets-Banksy. Slightly older crowd, smaller rooms, easy combi with AMAZE. Madame Tussauds Amsterdam on Dam Square is the closest cousin to Upside Down for camera-roll energy, with the same ticket-on-arrival logistics. For something more theatrical, the London Dungeon runs the same interactive-actor format if you’re combining Amsterdam with a UK leg.

Book the slot you want before you fly, especially for weekends. Both venues regularly sell out their best windows two to three days ahead, and the day-of walk-in rate is pricier and less flexible. Do AMAZE solo or with one other person, and bring the group to Upside Down. That’s the rule.