Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre

What an extraordinary place. Met by wonderful people who knew stuff and came back to make sure we were getting all the information we wanted. Allowed to take photos. Incredibly amazed at the Pacific crash site of the Lockheed Hudson. Brilliant to have so much history open to the public. The food and coffee were good too. Thanks to everyone.

A must visit museum. There are in fact 2 sections. WW1 and then WW2 and both take around an hour each to walk around. Both are very good and well worth the visit. There is a good cafe so a coffee between the WW's is a good idea. The staff are very good and within each section there was a guide that just made the visit all that more interesting.

Well worth a visit here. Many hours of work gone into this set up. Plenty of free parking. Good little Cafe, light and airy. Souvenir shop also. Bathrooms clean and fresh. The Stalingrad experience in a replica bombed building enduring a German air force attack is quite unique.

Highly recommend stopping here! Although be prepared, we went in expecting to be in and out in under an hour, we were there over 3 hours. Also pay the extra and check out both exhibits, the history here is very interesting and well presented with interesting facts and information!

Allow a good couple of hours to go through this place. Its got so much finer detail about all to do with the great wars , the people it left behind, the machinery , the soldiers , the platoon the landscape. It really is an interesting eyeball.and brain matter feast for any age .

My husband and I were driving through Blenheim and had heard from a New Zealand Facebook travel post that this museum was worth seeing. We planned to stop here for an hour, but ended up spending three hours at both the WWI & WWII museums. They were both great, but we were very impressed with the WWI museum! A museum educator, Roy, was absolutely wonderful! He continued to check on us at the WWI museum every so often and explained the exhibits and told us the historical facts behind each exhibit (which each exhibit is based on an actual event or photograph that had been taken). He offered other factual information about planes (Irish linen for the wings, propellers with interruptor devices, darts the soldiers dropped before bombs were invented, etc) He was one of the highlights of the museum!!! We would highly recommend this museum. Also there is a nice café with food, pastries, and beverages for before visiting or between museums or after visiting both. We purchased pastries and beverages & also brought some of our own food and had a nice picnic on the tables outside provided.

I am not an aviation person, but wow! I definitely don't think you need to be. What a fantastic place. The displays that have been made by Weta Workshops are of their usual standard. So real looking. Definitely a must visit.

Absolutely worth the time to go through both exhibitions. We spent 2 hours here. The short cinema experience in the WW2 is very informative.

Absolutely one of the best World War I and II plane collections I have seen. What sets this rather small museum apart (from some massive.US plane museums) is the level of restoration and condition of the planes where a number of them are still in flying condition. The other is that the World War I planes are owned and staged by Sir Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame. He used his movie company to create sets and stages for the planes that bring them to life. There are great stories of the pilots that flew them with uniforms and memorabilia that are extremely rare such as pieces of The Red Baron's plane. While the WWI museum is featured as the best of the three museums the WWII museum is well worth visiting just as well. There you will see the top fighters in WW2 and some rare Russian and German planes that survived the war and are in excellent condition. The third museum is one on antique cars in which we unfortunately did not have time to visit. This is a not to miss museum for the war historian and airplane buff.