You really ought to try one! It can be quite an experience.
I once bought a very expensive and nice one from a fancy shop in San Diego that specialized in selling only hand-made kaleidoscopes. My son's and I spent a couple of hours looking through many before deciding on which ones we wanted. I chose one that seemed to shoot light down the barrel back at my eye. The shop owner then told me it was the first one an elderly man had made entirely on his own after his wife had died and who usually made the visual apparatus. Quite a special one and a fantastic story to go with the effects I was viewing. Like an eternal view into their years of shared love.