New York City has no dearth of incredible museums. From the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History to smaller institutions like the New York Transit Museum and the Tenement Museum, you could spend a whole week in the city just museum hopping from one place to the next and not get bored.

But museum fatigue is a bonafide problem. (You know, when your feet start to ache after standing in front of sculptures for a few hours and your brain goes, “Not another painting that a three-year-old could draw.”) And in mammoth-sized museums like the Met, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and unsure about what’s worth seeing.

Enter Museum Hack. In an effort to get out of my cocktail bar comfort zone and into more of New York City’s cultural institutions, I signed up for their “Un-Highlights” tour of the American Museum of Natural History, not knowing what to expect.

It was wacky. it was zany. And it was the best time I’ve had in a museum in years. Here’s why.

But First, What is Museum Hack?

Museum Hack is the brainchild of Nick Gray, who founded the company in 2013 to solve “museum apathy.” Gray himself became smitten with museums as a result of a romantic date at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. After his date gave him a personal tour — emphasizing pieces she was passionate about instead of the glitzier, more famous ones — he was inspired to return to the museum and learn more, eventually giving similar talks to friends.

Gray’s hobby ultimately turned into a full-fledged business, as it soon became apparent that there was a lot of interest in these kinds of unconventional, renegade tours. With names like “Un-Highlights,” “Badass Bitches,” and “The Completely Unofficial & Definitely Unlicensed Boy Wizard Tour,” you can tell right off the bat that these aren’t your grandmother’s tours. (But as they say, if she’s cool, then bring her too!).

In a nutshell: if you want to wander in silence by yourself and/or want a tour led by the teacher from Charlie Brown (wah wah), then this isn’t the tour for you. But if you want a tour guide that points out the — ahem — cheekier aspects of classical Greek sculptures or juicy gossip behind that oil painting, then you’ll feel right at home.

Where Does Museum Hack Lead Tours?

Museum Hack currently leads public tours in the following cities:

• New York City (current tours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, plus a Grand Central Scavenger Hunt)
• San Francisco (current tours at the de Young Museum)
• Washington, DC (current tours at the National Gallery of Art)
• Chicago (current tours at the Art Institute of Chicago)
• Los Angeles (current tours at The Getty Center)

Museum Hack also leads company team building activities in Philadelphia at — you guessed it — the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Museum Hack runs private tours in addition to public tours, and they even help facilitate bachelorette parties and marriage proposals (which actually sound really cute).

My Unconventional Night Day at the Museum: Or, How My Museum Hack Tour Made Me Like Museums Again

OK, that subtitle is a bit embellished. It’s not that I dislike museums — au contraire. I generally try to squeeze in a museum or two when I travel, whether it’s the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam or Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle.

But typically, I’m in the museum by myself or with a friend, wandering around aimlessly and wondering why the hell people consider Rothko’s paintings of stripes in various colors to be actual art. (Really, if you can tell me, please do.)

I’ve taken a few museum tours before, but they’ve all been rather… dull, to put it politely. Maybe it’s the monotonous tour guide’s voice that causes me to zone out. Maybe it’s just that I’m an art history dodo. Or maybe it’s because on each of those tours, people shuffled around like The Walking Dead with a glazed over expression that screamed, “Can we just get to the @#$!ing gift shop already?”

I’d heard positive reviews about Museum Hack from friends, so I decided to give one of their tours a shot. And that’s how I found myself standing next to a dinosaur skeleton inside the American Museum of Natural History one morning in April.

Who Takes a Museum Hack Tour, Anyway?

Short answer: all of these happy people.

Long answer: the above group of happy people was not actually my tour group, because I was too busy running around, having fun, and taking everything in during my tour to snap a perfect photograph of our group.

What I can tell you, however, is that we had a total of seven people on our “Un-Highlights” tour of the American Museum of Natural History: two sisters in their 50s, a recently married younger couple, an older married couple, and myself. We hailed from cities spanning the globe: Minneapolis; Cleveland; Chicago; Oxford, England; and New York City. In short, it was a great mix of people who weren’t afraid of a few (OK, quite a few) F-bombs and reveled in learning something new.

What Was Our Museum Hack Tour Like?

Based on the clear instructions in my ticket confirmation e-mail, it couldn’t have been easier to spot my Museum Hack tour guide, Sarah, upon arrival at the American Museum of Natural History. With its bright orange colors, Sarah’s Museum Hack sign was hard to miss as she stood next to the Barosaurus skeleton — which, coincidentally, is the tallest freestanding dinosaur mount in the world.

Once our group introduced ourselves to each other (and revealed our inner spirit animals, which we were told to keep an eye out for in the museum), our tour began.

Sarah was sassy, hilarious, and quick on her feet — which was important, because we traversed the museum multiple times rather quickly. (“I may be small, but I’m fast,” Sarah declared at the start of our tour, and it proved to be true.) The tour was fast-paced, but Sarah’s engaging personality kept us entertained from start to finish.

While I won’t reveal everything we learned on our two-hour tour, here’s a few fun facts:

Porcupine mating habits are just downright weird. Apparently female porcupines are only fertile 8-10 days of the year, so they’ve got to get it goin’ on. Basically, if said female thinks a potential mate’s golden showers are not up to snuff (seriously), she’ll find herself another mate. Oof.

Go home, ancient Greek dude, you’re drunk. Ancient Greeks believed that amethyst, a violet variety of quartz, protected its owner from intoxication. They wore the stone and carved drinking vessels from it, thinking it would prevent them from getting drunk. (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t really work.)

This whale sculpture hanging in the museum? Yeah, it weighs 21,000 pounds. That means 10.5 tons. Whoa.

This boat came from one tree. Legend has it that cats roamed the museum at night and may or may not have used the boat as a litter box when it was on the floor.

Ahnighito, one portion of a much larger meteorite that fell to Earth from space, landed in Greenland thousands of years ago. Explorer Robert Peary hauled the meteorite from Greenland to the American Museum of Natural History, but the story gets much darker. You’ll have to take the tour to find out why.

Museum Hack Tour: The Highlights and Lowlights

Overall, our tour rocked. The stories we heard were humorous, slightly edgy, and at times quite thought-provoking. I appreciated that our guide sprinkled in a healthy dose of cultural sensitivity and got us to question why certain exhibitions were presented the way they were (or remained unchanged). I also liked that the group size was so small — we weren’t waiting for 20 people to catch up to us.

The interactive portion of Museum Hack’s tours really set them apart. At one point, we were given cute, tiny plastic dinosaurs (that we got to keep!) and had to find the corresponding dinosaur skeleton. We then shared fun facts that we uncovered about our dinosaurs with the group.

At the tour’s end, we received a Polaroid photograph of our experience to take home. Pretty cool, huh?

What Would I Have Changed?

Only two things. First — and this isn’t really Museum Hack’s fault — but apparently 11 AM on a Friday morning is prime time for school groups to visit. (Like really, did some NYC School Planning Committee decree that all elementary school science museum field trips would all happen at the same time?) Thus, there were a few times when the kids were so loud that we couldn’t hear Sarah. Fortunately, she was able to adapt; we returned to these objects at a later time when the noise stopped.

The second thing is that I wish we could have been provided with a map of the museum at the end of our tour. Some of us wanted to continue exploring the museum post-tour, and since I was by myself, I got super lost trying to find my way back to certain exhibits. (I have a particular set of skills, and getting lost in museums is one of them. Like, I would never survive Night at the Museum.) If you plan to stay longer, I’d suggest picking up a museum map before your tour.

Bonus: Where to Drink After Your Museum Hack Tour

If you’re the kind of person who wants to grab a drink after your tour — hey, with all that talk about amethysts warding off intoxication, you might be inspired — then you’re in luck. The Dead Poet is located very close to the American Museum of Natural History, and its literary theme will keep your learning buzz going strong.

Looking for an actual meal (or a caffeine boost)? Museum Hack has a handy dandy list of restaurants located near the museum for your consideration.

Practical Info

• Museum Hack’s Un-Highlights Tour of the American Museum of Natural History costs $69 per person.
• Tours currently run every day except Tuesdays and Thursdays. (Be sure to check the Museum Hack website for the most up-to-date pricing and availability.)
• Tickets are available online here.

Pro tip ⇒ Tips for your guide are not included in the ticket cost, so be sure to budget some extra moola for tips. Trust me, these guides are worth it!

Essential Info:
Where should you stay in New York City? Check out all options here.
Want a guidebook for New York City? I recommend this guidebook.
Where else have I visited in New York lately? Beacon, NY and Coney Island Brewery.
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Thank you to Museum Hack for providing me with a complementary tour. As always, opinions are 100% my own, and not even a tiny dinosaur souvenir can change that. For more thirsty adventures, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest!