Entertainment

NIGHTS AT THE MUSEUM

‘NIGHT at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” topped the box office last weekend, but here in the Big Apple’s American Museum of Natural History, truth was stranger than fiction — hundreds of New York City kids and their parents bunked down for the night in and around the great blue whale.

Like the movie series, museum sleepovers are enjoying an unprecedented surge of popularity.

“We had sleepovers here years ago, but they went by the wayside in the late 1980s,” says museum spokesman Brad Harris. That sure has changed: Now the museum, which often stood empty after 5:45 p.m., is home to as many as 24 sleepovers a year.

But don’t expect to run wild, the way Ben Stiller and the pharaoh do. With several hundred people attending the sleepovers, order is the name of the game. Participants watch an IMAX film, tour the museum by flashlight, and sometimes get special exhibitions just for them, often with live animals. There’s an evening snack and breakfast in one of the museum’s cafeterias, and even a cot to sleep on.

Downtown, the Rubin Museum of Art is gearing up for its Peak Experience ultimate sleepover, when 40 children climb a faux Mount Everest — the museum’s six-story spiral staircase. Eight-time Everest climber Robert Anderson will teach kids the basics of high-altitude climbing as he rappels straight down the staircase, hooked onto a rope suspended from the museum’s 90-foot-high atrium.

At night, the climbers will descend to the “base camp” for a Sherpa dinner of tsampa, or ground barley. Anderson will stay all night with the kids, as they tell stories and fall asleep under the stairs.

For those who’d like to get away from the city for the night, the Atlantis Marine World Aquarium in Riverhead, LI, offers a “sleep with the fishes” overnight several times a year, complete with pizza dinners, bagel breakfasts and fish food (for feeding the residents).

This nocturnal adventure includes a flashlight tour of the sea animals that come out only at night. There’s also a hands-on discussion about sea life, art projects and a movie — anything from “Bugs and Crawlers” to “Indiana Jones.”

After a 6 a.m. wake-up, the Atlantis Explorer tour boat takes guests down the Peconic River for an environmentally minded cruise, stopping at the aquarium’s private island on Flanders Bay. It also tours the salt marsh and estuary.

With the aquarium located so near the tony Hamptons, it’s no wonder the sleepovers are favored by adults, too.

“One night, we looked in on a private group and it was all adults,” the aquarium’s spokeswoman says. “There wasn’t a single child to be found.”

Pack your pajamas

Want to spend the night at a museum? Here’s what you need to know:

* The American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street. Upcoming sleepovers June 19 and 26, July 10 and 25 and Aug. 2 and 21, 5:45 p.m. to 9 a.m. Open to 8- to 12-year-olds.

Bottom line: $119 a person for members, $129 a person for nonmembers. One adult is required for every one to three children; preregister at Central Reservations, 212-769-5200.

* Rubin Museum of Art, 150 W. 17th St., between Sixth and Seventh avenues. Next sleepover June 13 at 7 p.m. for kids ages 9 to 12.

Bottom line: $175 per child (registration is limited to 40); tickets at rmanyc.org or 212-620-5000, ext. 344.

* Atlantis Marine World Aquarium, 431 E. Main St., Riverhead, LI. (The aquarium is walking distance from the LIRR’s Riverhead station). Summer sleepover dates to be announced; private parties welcome, beginning at 7 p.m. (one chaperone per 10 people, ages 3 to 21).

Bottom line: $48.50 to $64.50 per person (depending on whether you take the next day’s cruise). Details and reservations at 631-208-9200, ext. 186.