I remember when I used to connect my Game Boy Advance to my Gamecube to visit the island in the original Animal Crossing game. Boy have things changed since then with the latest Animal Crossing New Leaf 3DS allowing you to visit it whenever you want from the dock in your town. Well, at least anytime after Tortimer shows up and tells you about it (I think this happened after about a week in town). Oh, and you need to pay 1,000 Bells per trip. There is also so many things to do at the island now.
One thing to pay attention to when visiting the island is that you cannot take anything with you or carry anything back on you. You can pick up tools to use while on the island from the little guy (gyroid?) right outside the building. In order, to take things off the island you have to put them in the drop box as shown above. You can pick them up in the basket on the dock back in your town. The drop box has 4 pages of 10 slots.
One of the most interesting things you can from the island is take tours. There are different kinds of tour and they seem to vary by availability. Some of the tours involve catching bugs or fish. Other tours involve finding fossils and planting flowers. I have also noticed diving tours. You cannot take anything on tour, but you can get tools while there and you can bring back the fruit. This makes tours a good way to collect fruit exotic to your town without having to visit other people's towns.
Above is an example of completing a garden tour. Depending on how well you perform on the tour, you will earn Bronze, Silver, or Gold Tortimer award status. You get more medals depending on how you perform. The medals can be used to buy stuff from the shop on the island.
Another new thing I learned about on the island was diving. I first learned about it from a tour, but then I enjoyed borrowing the tool and swimming around the island to catch sea creatures to send back to my town and add to the museum.
