Vanderbilt Museum and Planetarium

I visited this museum for the first in July, and I fell in love with it. It has a beautiful ground with a great view of the Long Island Sound, and there are multiple museums within it. The planetarium shows are ok. I highly recommend the mansion tour. Our tour guide was great and kept the group interested. I purchased a membership for two after my first tour. It really pays to be a member. I've made three trips so and it already paid off. Planetarium shows and mansion tours are included in the admission fee. I also like that there are carts that can take visitors and members from the Planetarium to the mansion if they are unable to walk the distance. It is also a nice place to have a picnic. Parking is free, and there is no admission fee to visit the grounds.

This is a hidden gem. We stopped here unplanned after seeing it on Google maps. It's a beautiful Spanish revival style mansion and planetarium. We bought a 11 dollar ticket for a cool one hour show. It was neat. After we self toured the mansion which includes a collection of taxidermy, specimens, and even a mummy. It was a fun way to spend a Sunday.

Omg! This location is so very beautiful! I felt like I was in Europe. The history behind this museum is very good. It has a planetarium which I didn’t visit, but I was content with everything else. The mansion and the grounds were a sight to see. I recommend anyone to visit!
And I’d visit this place over and over and over again! 😅😂🥹

This museum and planetarium is on the hilly area of Centerport, which is in the Suffolk country of Long Island. If your knees are aching, then this is not the place for you. Ground pass only costs $10, and the laser show in the planetarium costs extra. Laser Taylor Swift is a show where hits of Taylor Swift brought to life in a unique laser show. Mansion provides excellent photo opportunities, and the back of the mansion is even better for photo opps. I was amazed by the very detailed stone pathway all around the mansion and water management system. I will definitely go to Planetarium again.

What an incredible day we had at my BFFs daughters wedding. As a child growing up here it was always part of a school field trip, or a day outing with my family. I was excited to bring my family and share this amazing mansion and especially for a wedding. My kids also remember my dad telling them about how he, his dad and brothers were part of the restoration of the cars in the garage. It was so nice to explore the grandure of history that still stands. The museums collection of artifacts and butterflies are just as I remembered. My family really enjoyed this. Much of America remove places like this and it is sad for our future generations. Thank you for keeping it alive!

Lovely place, but honestly I’m disappointed. A lot of people, including commercial photographers (in my opinion they need to book some separate time. Today it was few photoshoots and I couldn’t walk through some spots because they were occupied with equipment).
Also mansion tour was very unclear. We wanted to purchase tickets for house tour and lady in reception said it’s all included in general admission. We only saw few rooms that were open for public and were highly disappointed, thinking it’s all that’s left from the mansion. In reality there is more to see, but it’s separate tour with a guide and I don’t know how it works.
I saw in other comment last tour is at 3:30, and that’s the time we arrived. But nobody explained us anything.
The rooms that were open though, had that “old” smell. Probably it wasn’t restored in a while.
I think it worth a visit if you live nearby, but try to go early in the morning t avoid crowds and make sure you know how to get that mansion tour, and hopefully you will get better experience than I did.

Update:
I came back 4 months after original review. This time my experience went much better. I got to go inside the mansion with a tour. It was really interesting, great tour guide and amazing history of the place. Also, this time I visited in September and it was way less people than in June. So if you could, I recommend to go “of season” to avoid crowds.

So overall I got satisfied with my experience. The main thing is - do research before you go. First time we were not properly explained, that there is few open rooms in mansion, and it’s not the whole house. To see the whole house you need to book a tour with tour guide and the last tour of the day at 3:30. So make sure you know all of that and don’t get disappointed like I did the first time!