CERN - Geneva

Johnny Nguyen

Ticket booking system is a real hassle, you just got to get in as early as you can, the tour is good in general, lots to learn and see! However, If it can goes into more details or some thing closer to the real work, it would be much better! Staff are friendly but some front staff are not really helpful and played on their phone when we tried to ask some questions!

DeeRaman

Phenomenal once in a lifetime experience. Bucket list moment to be able to visit CERN. Guided tour for 1.5hrs with a PhD student here. Lovely explanations and easy to understand. You can see an old collider (synchrocyclotron) and also the current ATLAS project control room. Need to come early e.g. 8.30am to book tickets on their online portal- cannot book ahead. Lots of reviews complaining about this but was very easy to do, staff were friendly and helpful, and I agree with their efforts to do it so they cut down on "no-shows".

Hoong Wai Wong

CERN had seemed a complicated, forbidding science place but the visit itself showed otherwise.

It was simple to register our visit and sign up for the various guided tours and shows. Our guide was a physicist and knowledgeable to explain the history of the various particle accelerator machine evolutions.
Then with the static and interactive displays we learned about the science concepts broken down in easy to understand chunks.

Great experience overall and strongly recommended for all! ?

Natallia Hickman-Smith

I first found out about CERN from a scientific magazine when I was a child. Ever since, it was my dream to visit CERN!

I only managed to come there when I was already an adult and already had my own family. My family was inspired with my idea to visit this wonderful place..

When we came to CERN, we had so much impressions about it and all the excursions were really interesting!

I highly recommend CERN to anyone !

Simon Hudson

The tour was fascinating and the tour leader was brilliant.
Most of the exhibition stuff was interesting and a lot of thought, if not actual testing, had gone into it.

The administrative aspect, however, were woeful. You can't book anything without being on site, on their WiFi. You can't get onto WiFi without a roaming mobile connection or data. Once that's overcome you have to arrive, hope you can get a tour booking that day and that you haven't driven several hundred kilometres as a waste of time. There isn't even any signage to tell visitors where to head over they have parked. It's truly the worse arrangement I have ever encountered. Embarrassingly bad.

CERN is hugely important, impressive and world class. The way the visitor centre is currently accessed is the antithesis of that and undermines everything CERN stands for. At least it's free.

Sepideh Sepehri

I HAD THE WORST EXPERIENCE at CERN due to the unhelpful and rude staff. I arrived at 9 am and asked a woman at the counter how to register, showing her the registration page on my phone. She told me to just add a number and assured me I was set to visit the exhibition. I followed her instructions and proceeded to explore the exhibitions.

As an astrophysics student, I particularly enjoyed the "Our Universe" exhibit. However, I noticed other visitors had badges for guided tours, so I checked the monitor and saw these tours were available. By then, it was 12:30 pm. I approached another woman at the counter to inquire about the tours and was told I couldn’t join because I hadn’t registered and all spots were booked. I explained that no one had informed me about the tours when I registered. Her response was a cold stare.

Frustrated, I returned to the first woman to ask why she didn’t mention the guided tours. She rudely replied that it wasn’t her duty to inform me about them. I was taken aback by her attitude and told her she should quit if she couldn’t do her job properly. She claimed she knew her job well, but her lack of assistance said otherwise.

Fortunately, there was one spot left for a French-language tour, which I took. The tour guide didn’t speak English, despite nearly 90% of the group being English speakers. The guide kept questioning why we didn’t register for an English tour, and we all explained that the English tours were fully booked and the staff had been unhelpful.

Thankfully, an English tour leader kindly explained parts of the tour to me in English. The entire experience could have been much better with a more efficient booking system and staff who are both helpful and polite instead of these current rude useless staff.

Tien Nguyen

Came here today and learned a lot about physics. I didn’t know this is where the biggest LHC in the world is located. It is free and can be very crowded, but worth visiting with a friend who is passionate about physics

Ben

Cern itself is pretty good, with cool machines to play around with, i do think it would be better if they explained it more thoroughly and more staff to show around. It is a very big place with a lot to explore around, so i recommend you make time for the day you visit there. The ticketing system is awful and is very hard to get in. They dont offer you tickets straight on, so you have to buy it, then they send you an email so you get the tickets. Overral, if you are interested in physics and enjoy science, i really recommend this place to you. If not, then dont go.