| Edification value |  |
|---|---|
| Entertainment value |  |
| Should you go? | |
| Time spent | 64 minutes |
| Best thing I saw or learned | Wax classic movie monsters, most particularly Wax Béla Lugosi as Dracula. Now that’s what a wax museum should be all about!
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Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum offers visitors to its Times Square location a thoughtful meditation on the transience of celebrity — and its sometimes hefty toll — in the contemporary media maelstrom.
OK. It doesn’t do that. Not quite. Still, it wasn’t quite what I expected, either.
Fake Everything
Early in my visit to Madame Tussaud’s I decided to start counting the fake things surrounding me. Fake brick walls. Fake wooden floors. I thought the elevator might be fake for a while, but it turned out it was just very slow. Fake marble in the elevator, though. Fake champagne at the several bars throughout the exhibits. Ersatz…I don’t even know what the first room I got to is supposed to be. Roman piazza? Maybe. With fake lemon tree under fake candles in front of a fake window with fake cherubs.
It reminded me of Las Vegas.