Somewhere between the Phantom of the Opera’s lavish underground fever dream and the ultimate kitschy tourist trap is Wisconsin’s House on the Rock. Located really in the middle of nowhere – about an hour south of Wisconsin Dells and an hour west of Madison – this massive, homemade, collection of collections will take you the better part of a day to tour. (And may take part of your sanity.)
Wonderful, delightful, chaotic, whimsical, and at times overwhelming, this is a place you must see to believe. I’ll show you what I can in pictures, but nothing will prepare you for the total onslaught to the senses that is House on the Rock.
House on the Rock
The actual house at the House on the Rock is but a small part of the whole experience. If you arrive thinking that you’re just going to tour a house (like nearby Taliesin), you are woefully mistaken! There’s a welcome center, a museum about the collection, the house itself, then what I can only describe as a descent into madness.
Not that you can see any of that from the road. Once you park, you enter a sedate, lodge-like entrance building. There are bathrooms, Asian-style statues, and I think maybe a small gift shop. (The main gift shop is somewhere else.) You can purchase your tickets here, or save a little by buying your tickets online ahead of time.
I recommend arriving relatively early to start your tour. It takes anywhere from 3-5 hours, depending on your level of interest. Plus, they start closing down entire sections starting in the afternoon. It took me over four hours, but I also walked through again in less than 30 minutes to use up tokens – I’ll discuss those more later. Outside food is not allowed, but there is a restaurant about halfway through. Bathrooms are found at intervals along the attraction path.
There is a well-marked one-way path through the exhibits, so you don’t wander willy-nilly. I’ll discuss everything in the order that you experience them on the tour.
Asian Garden
From the Welcome Center, you walk down a long outdoor covered walkway toward the Alex Jordan Center. (There is a LOT of walking involved here, by the way.) Between the Welcome Center and the Alex Jordan Center is an Asian Garden. You get a good view of it on the walk down, but you can explore it more from the base of the walkway.
Alex Jordan Center
The man who built the House on the Rock, plus everything that follows, is Alex Jordan. While he may not have physically built everything himself – he hired plenty of construction workers and artists – his is the brain behind almost everything you’ll see. (He sold it in the ’80s, just before his death, to a friend who added some additional collections.)
In the Alex Jordan Center, you learn all about the man and his projects. It’s very museum-like, and considerably more sedate than the rest of the experience. This is also the first section to close down in the afternoon. There are bathrooms here if you need them.
Gate House
The Welcome Center and the Alex Jordan Center were added in 2008. Prior to that, the Gate House was your entry point and features a hub for turning right toward the House on the Rock, or left to the rest of the experience.
There are indoor and outdoor portions to this area. A long stone hallway features a few intricate artifacts. At the bottom of the hall, someone takes your ticket and directs you toward the house.
Original House & Infinity Room
Up a long, covered walkway, you come to the Original House, built on Deer Shelter Rock and with many rock faces still visible within the house. It’s vaguely, eccentrically, Japanese, with many nooks, low ceilings, and conversation pits with built-in seating. There’s a kitchen, but I don’t remember any bedrooms. I’m not sure that it was ever made to be lived in.
The first example of one of Jordan’s music machines can be found inside the house. A rigged piano, harp, drum, and stringed instruments play Ravel’s Bolero. This one is automatic, it doesn’t require a token to play – see the Mill House section for more information on tokens.
Attached to the Original House on the Rock is the Infinity Room, a long cantilevered room that, through forced perspective, seems to stretch into infinity. Thousands of glass panes give you a tree-top view of the surrounding forest.
There’s only so far you can walk to the end – a glass partition blocks off the very end. There’s one more music machine here, set into a nook, though I don’t remember if it worked. It can get very stuffy in the Infinity Room – there are ceiling fans and even a big industrial fan, but with all the windows, it gets pretty warm in here.
Mill House
After walking back down the covered walkway and through the Gate House and hub, you’re directed this time to the Mill House, the next stop on our tour. Built in the same style as the Original House, the Mill House’s main feature is a huge fireplace. But it was mainly built to house some of Jordan’s collections, like crazy guns, suits of armor, and much more. The men’s & women’s bathrooms are of note here, with the collections continuing inside.
It’s in the Mill House that Jordan’s music machines start to appear in earnest. Some of these look like music boxes that were found and bought, but soon, they turn into much bigger contraptions created in-house.
A Word About Tokens
To play the music machines, you need tokens. The first change machine is in the Mill House, giving two tokens per dollar. There are three more change machines along the way – in Heritage of the Sea, Music of Yesterday, and by the Blue Danube. All the change machines only take cash, but you can buy tokens with a credit card in the Welcome Center and the Atrium Restaurant. Any leftover tokens can be used in the gift shops.
I would start out changing $5 max. probably less. On my visit, I went all in and changed about $10 and had way too many tokens left over. I often approached a machine to find it already playing due to the previous visitor, so I didn’t need all my tokens to hear everything I wanted to. So start out small and be generous with using them. You can always get more. But don’t skip getting them! A big part of the experience at House on the Rock is playing the machines.
Streets of Yesterday
Past the Mill House is when things really start getting interesting. You exit the “back” of the Mill House (really all one big building) and enter the Streets of Yesterday. This is literally a brick-lined street with small storefronts, each holding a different collection of items, like dolls, or lamps, or a pretend barbershop or sheriff’s office. Along the street, you can use your tokens on fortune-telling machines and small vignettes.
A lighted marquee for the Music of Yesterday is partway along. You can cut through here to head straight to the biggest music machines, but you’ll miss a lot and can’t easily backtrack. At the top of the street is a huge calliope organ, the first gigantic music machine you’ll come to. It sounds like a huge carousel band organ, with pipes, glass bells, whiskey jugs, and percussion that plays in real-time (or seems to.)
Heritage of the Sea
Next, after turning the corner near the calliope, you enter a huge, three-level space called Heritage of the Sea. Rearing up from the middle of the floor is a massive whale being attacked by a giant squid! As you travel up the ramps around the outside of the room, you see the foamy waves, the giant mouth (with inexplicable non-whale-like teeth), all the way up to the raised tail surrounded by birds at the ceiling. You can even spot a life-sized rowboat caught on the whale’s massive tongue.
On all the walls surrounding this bonkers vision is a collection of nautical curiosities, mostly in the form of model ships. Large models with many sails, tiny ships in bottles, a huge model of the Titanic on the icy sea. There are also examples of scrimshaw – items carved out of whalebone, old uniforms, and more. There is one music machine in here, a cute Octopus’s Garden that plays the Beatles tune, found on the bottom floor as you come in.
At the top of the room as you exit, there’s a huge Royal Coach before you enter the next room.
Tribute to Nostalgia
Since you exit the Heritage of the Sea at an upper level, you enter Tribute to Nostalgia from above, winding down a ramp into almost a small little town. From above, you see quaint rooftops and colorful kites hanging from the ceiling. Then you walk down to find unique cars and wagons, and little streets that hold more little collections. There are a few token-operated machines in here as well.
Atrium Restaurant
Even if you aren’t ready for a meal, you might be ready for a break and a snack by this point in your touring. And to be honest, this is a good spot for a proper lunch because there’s quite a bit more still to come! The Atrium Restaurant serves pizza, sandwiches, and snacks at pretty reasonable prices. During my visit last summer, a generous slice of pepperoni pizza was $6 and a chicken salad sandwich was $6.50. There are drinks, chips, and cookies, and plenty of seating and restrooms.
You have to walk through the restaurant to continue your tour, but you can also backtrack into Heritage of the Sea through a small side hallway with more cases of stuff.
Music of Yesterday
Past the Atrium Restaurant, you get into the real meat of the attraction, the room-sized music machines. They start out smaller, in a nook or half a wall. A funeral carriage retooled into a New Orleans Jazz party, a wall of accordions. But soon, you step into rooms filled floor to ceiling with a highly-themed ensemble of musical instruments. The hallway culminates in the Red Room, one of the first really mind-melting rooms you’ll see. Just pop in a token to hear them play and move.
To be fair, I don’t think all the instruments are actually playing all those notes. For starters, the strings on all the stringed instruments look pretty janky – those for sure aren’t being tuned, much less played. I think it’s more of a pipe organ or synthesizer situation with hydraulically animated instrument props. But you can tell some of the percussion is being played in real time. It’s interesting to stand there and figure out what’s real and what’s not.
Spirit of Aviation
After the excesses of the Music of Yesterday section (and what comes after), the small Spirit of Aviation room barely registers. All I remember are some model planes hanging from the ceiling. There are bathrooms here, however.
Carousel Room
Next, you walk into the massive Carousel Room. You are faced with a huge spinning carousel with fantastical animals of all shapes and sizes, topped with peacocks, and absolutely drenched in lights and those signature red globe chandeliers seen first in the Red Room. All around the rest of the room are antique carousel animals, angels hanging from the ceiling, and drums and bells on the walls.
Also, this room is HOT. All the energy from the lights and movement make for a very warm atmosphere. But you don’t stick around here too long anyway – exit through the “Devil’s Throat” to get to the next section. (There is also an exit straight to the outside if you need to cut your tour short.)
Organ Room
If the Carousel Room didn’t completely overwhelm you, the Organ Room might do the trick. Two levels of walkways surround organ pipes and oversized organ consoles, plus huge copper kettles, drums, and even machinery like a submarine engine. There are more of those huge chandeliers made up of red globes, including one big enough for Jordan to plan an office space inside. (It never happened. For one, it was way too hot.)
With a pipe-organ-and-liquor-distillery theme going on, all the red lights, and the air dripping with organ music (no tokens needed), this is the part that makes me think of the Phantom of the Opera’s dungeon lair, with surprises everywhere you look.
Inspiration Point
If you are getting overwhelmed by this point, next you get a chance for some fresh air and sunshine at Inspiration Point. You might not even realize how overwhelmed you’ve been until you step out blinking into the sunlight!
First, there’s a bar area, though it doesn’t look like it’s been staffed for ages. And there are bathrooms here. Then you get a chance to step out onto a patio and walk down a path to ostensibly get a good view of the Infinity Room from the outside. Sadly, you can’t see much due to the trees. I guess they’ve grown a lot since this area was built.
Doll Carousel Building
After your breather, you walk back through the Organ Room and straight into hell, er, I mean, the Doll Carousel Building. If the Carousel Room feels like a stunning way to end the tour, and the Organ Room a bit of overkill, the Doll Carousel Room (and honestly, everything that follows) is much too much.
Here, you pass tall tiers of stacked carousels, five and seven levels high, crammed full of little doll passengers. As if to seal your nightmarish fate, models of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse hang in a corner. (You pass through this room twice – the four horsemen are near the end of the tour.)
It’s somewhere between the Organ Room and the Doll Carousels that I begin to wonder about Alex Jordan’s sanity. And fear for my own.
Doll House Room
After your first pass through the Doll Carousels, you enter a corridor with all manner of doll houses. (Maybe this is where all the dolls for the carousels came from…maybe it’s where they sleep at night. 😳😳)
At this point in the tour, it’s hard to take in anything new. Especially something as mundane as tiny houses. Don’t get me wrong, they are pretty fantastic for doll houses. But you see, your brain has melted by now and your feet are moving of their own accord towards the exit. (And it’s not just me, I passed a couple of ladies who made similar comments.)
Circus Room
At the end of the miniature houses, it turns into miniature carnival scenes. Then there are whole miniature three-ring circuses with tents and trapese artists and animals. Then you round the corner into a huge, two-level life-sized circus, with mannequins on a pachyderm pyramid. An elaborate circus wagon has a full band inside. Rounding out the other side of the room is a veritable orchestra with full-sized “human” players.
I think the circus orchestra is token-activated, the first one for a while. Around the outside of the room is an impressive collection of animatronic banks.
Galleries
After the Circus Room, we have the “Galleries.” It feels so plain after everything we’ve been through! Inside, there are cases of impressively-carved ivory (possibly authentic, possibly not.) Wood-carved screens, impressive tableaus of medieval armor in action. Even copies of the royal jewels. There’s a lot along here, but again, it’s a bit hard to take it in.
Japanese Garden & Exit
There’s one more pass through the Doll Carousel Room, past the looming Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, then you are finally spit out into the sunshine and at the end of your tour. You exit out the side of the Carousel Room, walk under the long walkway to the Original House, and past a Japanese Garden, which you can walk around.
Pass the garden and you’re at the back of the Alex Jordan Center, on an outside lower level. This is where the main gift shop is, and where you can spend the rest of your tokens, if you have any left. This goes for drinks and snacks as well – I used several tokens on a bottle of water. There are bathrooms here, as well as a modern-ish collection of novelty phones – including Mickey Mouse, Ziggy, and Garfield. Then it’s back up a covered walkway to the Welcome Center and the parking lot.
A Second Pass in under 30 Minutes
I had way too many tokens left after my tour, even after buying a bottle of water, and I asked if I could go through again, just to use up my tokens. This caused *much* confusion, but they let me go though and using several cut-throughs I was able to just walk through the section with the music machines.
If it helps at all, here’s how I did it: After walking back down to the Alex Jordan Center – which by 2:00 was already closed – I walked through the Gate House and left at the hub, bypassing the Original House completely. Then through the Mill House and into the Streets of Yesterday, where I spent several tokens on fortune telling machines. At the marquee for Music of Yesterday, I turned in there, bypassing Heritage of the Sea, Tribute to Nostalgia, and the Atrium Restaurant. Then after spending the rest of my coins in the music machines, I skipped Spirit of Aviation and exited right from the Carousel Room, skipping the Organ Room and everything after. I can’t say I recommend this idea – I’d sooner recommend you get less tokens to begin with. But it can be done.
Hours
The season for the House on the Rock starts in mid-March and extends through the end of the year. However, it’s only open daily from mid-May to late September. The rest of the year, they’re closed Tuesdays & Wednesdays,
When the House is open, hours are 9-5, with the last entry at 4 pm, and 3:00 for the tour I did – see below.
Admission
The tour that I describe above is called the “Ultimate Experience” – the tour that includes everything they have to offer. You can buy a ticket for this online for $33.95 for adults, $17.95 for juniors age 7-17, and $4.95 for children 6 and under. On site, those prices go up to $36.95, $19.95, and $5.95, respectively. (Seniors 62+ and military get the online price.) Tickets are good any day during the regular operating season and you have to enter before 3:00 pm.
They also sell a “Highlights Experience” tour that skips everything after the first Carousel Room – so no Organ Room or Doll Carousels, which having seen them, sounds alright to me. Tickets for that are only sold on site. They cost $29.95 for adults, $16.95 for juniors 7-17, and $3.95 for children 6 and under. The last Highlights tour is sold at 3:30.
Then there is the “Original House Experience,” also only sold on-site, which just includes everything up to the Original House and Infinity Room. It costs $19.95 for adults, 11.95 for juniors 7-17, and $1.95 for children 6 and under. They sell the last ticket for that at 4:00, but the Alex Jordan Center and the Asian Garden close at 2:00.
Special Events
For Halloween, there’s “The Dark Side” experience on Friday & Saturday nights in October. It goes from 6:30-9:30 at night, after the regular day is over. It’s a haunted maze starting at the Devil’s Throat in the Carousel Room and ending at the Four Horsemen – which honestly feels appropriate. That section is scary enough during the day. You can get a ticket for $19.95 for ages 18 and up and $11.95 for ages 17 and below. A combo ticket for the regular tour plus The Dark Side costs $45.95 for 18+ and $25.95 for 17 and under.
Christmas Season runs from mid-November to the end of December. They turn everything from the Welcome Center to the Carousel Room into a winter wonderland, with special music, decorations, and 6,000 Santa Clauses. Everything past the Carousel Room is closed. This replaces the regular daytime tours, and House on the Rock is closed Tuesdays & Wednesdays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day. Tickets during Christmas cost $29.95 for adults, $27.95 for seniors 65 and over, $16.95 for juniors 7-17, and $3.95 for children 6 and under.
Conclusion
Having seen everything there is to see at the House on the Rock, I can’t tell if it’s a one-and-done, in the vein of “why would I put myself through that again,” or if it’s worth going again and again, in order to see more detail once you’ve gotten used to the spectacle of it all. I’m not sure if I would visit again by myself, but if I were with someone who had never been, I would 100% go again.
Note that there’s no wifi or cell service in this rural part of Wisconsin. It may be worth downloading an offline map of the area before you leave.
It’s also worth saying that I toured the entire House on the Rock, then went over to Taliesin to do a tour on the same day, so my brains hadn’t totally melted out of ears yet. I snagged the last tour of the day over there, and only the shortest version of what they offer. I suspect the grandest tour at Taliesin might be a little more edifying to the soul than House on the Rock – a difference of literally night and day – an airy house and farm tour vs. an indoor descent into madness. I’m not sure what it says about me that as much as I like Frank Lloyd Wright, I chose to stuff tokens into janky music machines – twice – instead. Let’s just say each location has its own, separate, charms.
BONUS: Scenic Overlook
North of the House on the Rock is a “scenic overlook.” Don’t be tempted – it’s even worse than Inspiration Point on the tour. You can’t see a damn thing.
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