I’ve never been to one but I’ve often wondered what they were like. If you’ve been to one, where did you go and what were your impressions?
Maybe I went in with too high an expectation, but generally, they didn’t look as “real” as I had hoped. Some were better than others, but in all cases you knew who they were supposed to be.
Creepy.
Even my 17 yr old niece (whose idea this was) found it bizarre.
Of course, this was a cheapie in a tourist trap (Pier 39, SF). A real one that draws its own crowds, may be a better experience. Or Not.
These didn’t even bother to form ALL of the viewable body parts - you could see where the figure ended along the edge.
Madame Tussaud’s was the single biggest waste of time and money I’ve ever experienced while being a tourist. It’s small, it’s crowded, it’s noisy, and the whole point–which I didn’t grok going in–is to take photos of yourself “with” celebrities. I thought it was going to be … I dunno… a museum. El wrongo.
The figures are well done, but they’re very still and very shiny. Couldn’t be mistaken for a real person.
It felt… drippy.
I had a real hankering to turn up the thermostat.
What Sattua said. Kind of a disappointment.
I’ve been to the Louis Tussaud’s in Niagara Falls, but that was about 20 years ago. I recall there being more historical figures than film and pop stars, so I guess that’s an aspect of wax museums that’s changed since then. Not all of the figures looked much like the people they were supposed to depict, but it was a pretty good-size museum so at least there were lots to look at. There was also a “chamber of horrors” medieval torture dungeon section that’s still there today.
I also remember the figures being roped off back then, this being well before the age of selfies.
The only waxworks I’ve been to was the one in the Tiger Balm Gardens in Singapore (actually, not sure the figures are wax). The exhibit depicts sinners being tortured in various levels of hell by being sawn in half etc. I was about 4 years old at the time and it left a lasting impression.
I was fine until I saw one of the dummies ‘breathing’.
I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
I’ve been to three but I have no idea what they were. One in DC, one in CA, and one in Gettysburg.
I haven’t been to one in 40 years.
What Sattua said. Huge waste of time IMHO. The only saving grace was that my mother in law was using a cane so the staff insisted we go to the front of the queue.
I visited the Tussaud’s in London many years ago, and the main thing I remember was that the artists apparently tried to compensate for the shininess of wax by adding lots of pores and other tiny imperfections. IMHO, they really overdid it in many cases; some of the celebrities looked like they had horrible skin afflictions. Their Alfred Hitchcock figure looked like Baron Harkonnen from David Lynch’s Dune.
Forget all that horror-movie crap about wax figures being indistinguishable from real people; there’s no way on God’s green earth you’d think any of them were alive. Those places are nothing more than tacky tourist traps.
Niagra Falls; worth the price of admission, but I’d never repeat the experience, even if it were free and I was bored.
FWIW I went to a MT’s in London and had a ball.
I thought it was fun posing with the people and doing fun things with them like putting next to Tiger, arm-wrestling The Hulk, making fun of expressions. Then again I went with friends and we just had fun kinda screwing around
I did the Hollywood Wax Museum near Dollywood. Didn’t find it nearly as life-like or interesting as I expected. Maybe if I was a real entertainment junkie it would have been cool but as it was I bailed fairly fast and moved on to other things.
Hokey, for the most part.
Long time back–Harper’s Ferry, WV. Dull, the figures were behind railings (I don’t know why you’d want your picture taken with John Brown anyway.) At the end, JB was about to be hung, when the head tipped up, the mouth fell open and he made a speech. Da end.
Same here. I don’t really see the point. The first one I ever went to was a million years ago in Philadelphia, some dusty old rooms in an old building. Weird looking statues, some lighting and sound effects were supposed to provide some ambience as you passed each exhibit. Seemed like something out of the past, further in the past than even that (approx. 1969).
I went to Madame Tussaud’s quite a long time ago. I was hoping for more macabre displays – and hoping for more from the macabre displays. They had a Gary Gilmore display, which was quite easy because the dummy was sitting in a chair with its face covered by the execution hood. There was some recorded dialogue of his death sentence being read, the lights flashed out and there was the sound of rifle shots, and when the light came on again the dummy was slumped in the chair. Pretty lame, I thought.
The idea of having my picture taken next to a ‘celebrity’ did not occur to me. I did see people doing it, and I thought they were being silly.
I’ve gone twice - once when I was little, once more recently. For some reason when I was 7 it seemed like the Coolest Thing Ever. Thinking back, now I understand why my parents looked exasperated the whole time. It’s really quite a strange concept.
On the plus side, without them we would’ve never gotten that great Twilight Zone episode about the journalist spending a night in the museum’s basement, so there’s that.