Is a visit to Phoenix's Butterfly Wonderland worth it?

One of the most popular things to do on a trip to Phoenix is to visit the Arizona Boardwalk. This is technically outside of the city of Scottsdale and within the Salt River Reservation (home of the Salt River Pima–Maricopa Indian Community)... But at only a thirty-minute drive north of Phoenix, it is still well within the bounds of the “Greater Phoenix area.” The Arizona Boardwalk is a tourist attraction-meets-amusement park complex that includes the OdySea Aquarium, the Museum of Illusions, and our stop of choice, the Butterfly Wonderland.

My mom and I went to the Butterfly Wonderland on advice from the many users of Yelp, and at first, I was a little skeptical. For one thing, it was one of the more expensive tourist attractions we visited (around $40 for an adult ticket), and with so many nature-y things to do in Phoenix, it may seem like a good idea to skip an indoor conservatory. However, I ultimately really enjoyed it. The butterfly enclosure we saw at the Tucson Botanical Gardens was certainly less exciting than this Butterfly Wonderland, and the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum had a section of flora to attract butterflies, not an enclosure. So, ultimately, I would have to rank this stop highly and recommend it if you are keen on seeing butterflies during your trip to Phoenix. 

The first thing you will do when you enter the Butterfly Wonderland is watch a ten-minute 3D movie about the migration of butterflies and some such. My mom says it was very interesting and worth seeing. Unfortunately, 3D films make me immediately nauseous, so although it was presented as more necessary than optional, I only saw about fifteen seconds of it before giving up and walking out.

The Butterfly Emergence Gallery

After the film, you will be led into a room where you can watch butterflies emerge from their cocoons. This was, I would say, equal parts gross and super cool. There were a bunch of different species and a range of sizes that bordered on monstrous. The butterflies were cool, but the empty, dried-up carcasses of their cocoons were kind of icky to me. It is in this room that you will get a little spiel about safety (so the butterflies don’t escape) before being allowed into the star attraction, the Butterfly Conservatory.

The Butterfly Conservatory

There were so many more butterflies in here than I expected. I really enjoyed how many different species there were because it was quite colorful and made it a fun little scavenger hunt to try to find all the species shown on the card they gave us. There were a lot of nice plants to look at and, more importantly, for the butterflies to alight on so that you get a good opportunity to photograph them. There was also a koi pond in the middle of this large conservatory. I didn't see any butterflies hanging out here, as there were other water features without notorious butterfly predators in them, but the waterfall was a nice feature.

The Aquarium

After you finish looking at butterflies, there are actually two more small sections of the facility to enjoy: an insectarium and an aquarium. The first, I specifically avoided due to my grave dislike of centipedes and spiders. I, in fact, had to make a concerted effort to look at the floor since this area is the only hallway for getting to the aquarium section of the Butterfly Wonderland. So apologies that I don't have any photos. However, I did (begrudgingly) note that there was a tarantula, some cockroaches, and a few other creepy crawlies in this section.

Once you do make it through the insects, the aquarium has some great frogs, fish, turtles, lizards, sharks, and even an axolotl! Since we didn't make it over to the larger aquarium (the OdySea Aquarium) next door, this seemed like a good sampling.

Conclusion

Although this wasn’t one of my favorite things I did in Phoenix, I still would recommend the Butterfly Wonderland and the Arizona Boardwalk more generally if you a) have a lot of time to kill, b) particularly like butterflies, or c) have kids. That said, if you only have a couple of days in Phoenix, I would instead recommend a visit to Papago Park for the Phoenix Botanical Garden and the Hole in the Rock, which were two of my favorite tourist attractions in town.