Miniature World Museum in Victoria, B.C.

Walking down the busy but well-kept streets of Victoria, British Columbia on Vancouver Island, my family and I had a destination in mind. Our goal: to find the harbour, rent a sea shuttle, and find a delicious seafood restaurant overlooking the ocean.

Then it began to pour.

Surprised by the deluge, my husband and I tried to find a place to shelter our shivering two-year-old and four-year-old children. As luck would have it, we ducked under a black awning and found ourselves reading the gilded writing splashed across the door.

"Miniature World. The Greatest Little Show on Earth," my husband read. "Wanna go in?" I nodded happily - we would be dry, warm, and entertained. Does escaping a surprise spring shower get any better than that?

And so we entered Miniature World, the land of all things teeny tiny.

Miniature Worlds claimed to be "The Greatest Little Show on Earth" 

If you'd like to go to Miniature World yourself, you need to head to 649 Humboldt Street in Victoria's downtown area. It is easy to miss - beyond the black awning with the golden lettering, there's not much else to announce its presence. But it is a great little attraction (pardon the pun) and a fantastic way to spend an hour of whimsy.

Joey and I each paid $16.00 to enter, while the kids were free. (For more costs, visit their website here.) The enthusiastic ladies at the front desk informed me that I was free to take any number of photos and videos that I wanted, but begged us to try to not touch or lean on the glass. I nodded wisely, noting that they wouldn't want anything to get broken.

"No, we just hate Windexing the displays 100 times a day," the one girl laughed. And that made more sense to me than someone touching it with their hand and having the glass box shatter inexplicably.

The Great Canadian Railway went all the way down this hall, around the corner, and back down the hall again!

We entered the museum and found ourselves being moved through the 85 displays very systematically, with arrows and train tracks on the carpet to help guide us if we got lost. (You couldn't get lost; you were encased by glass exhibits on either side the whole time. But the train tracks on the ground was a cute touch.)

The museum is divided into sections, with dioramas grouped together by theme. The first section was very historical, going over various wars and battles.

Various airplanes from all of the major world wars were strung up in this display.

There was a section for the Great Canadian Railway, which had a moving train that chugged its way through a gigantic diorama that stretched from west coast to east coast. It even had timed lighting that faded into sunsets and sunrises, giving the impression that it was taking the train several day to travel across the nation.

There was a section for fairy tales, such as Jack and the Beanstalk, and for fantasy, such as Gulliver's Travels. My children loved the fairy castle that blended fairy tale characters such as Cinderella with characters from classic literature, such as the cast of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer's Night Dream".

The giant fairytale castle, complete with actual 'flying' moving fairies!

Other sections included Frontierland, London, Castles of the World, Camelot, Circus World, and many more.

What got me very interested in the museum was the extreme and careful attention to detail each diorama had. In one war display, little 'fires' flickered within the bombed out buildings, while soldiers with tiny buckets of water ran to the scene - but that would be only a fraction of what that single diorama displayed. Each exhibit was dizzyingly full of different stories, if only you shifted to a slightly different angle or point of view.

The Castles of the World had moving trains that wove in and out of the dramatic cliffs.

Some scenes, like the castle Camelot or the wonderfully detailed Car Rally, had buttons you could push, which would set a piece of the diorama into motion. Sometimes you had no idea what part of the scene had started moving or changing, and you really had to explore with your eyes until you caught it. My kids had a great time pushing buttons, trying to see which detail in the scene was new.

Several sections of the museum were narrated, and the storyline explained what historical moment in time was being portrayed, or which piece of literature was represented. We perhaps moved a little too fast through the museum to give the narration justice, but the kids were too excited to see what was around the next corner to wait and listen to the speakers. If you go without children, I'm sure you'll learn a LOT more than I had the chance to!

The Camelot Castle had tons of little buttons to push - they raised drawbridges, moved wagons, and more!

We spent about one hour in the museum, peering into glass cases, pushing little buttons, playing 'Where's Waldo' type games with the kids trying to get them to spot a certain detail in the diorama. But one hour was enough for a four-year-old and three-year-old. I am sure with older children or no children at all, you could spend considerably longer inside, taking your time with each exhibit.

By the time we exited the museum, the rain had actually increased. Despairing over our lost water taxi ride and stroll around the harbour, we headed back to eat dinner at our hotel. We were staying at Hotel Zed, which was really cool - you should watch the video here. We did NOT despair, however, at our chance encounter stumbling into Miniature World. Without the rain, we never would have found it!