A Great Photo Oppurtunity (Madame Tussauds)

Member Name: Cheekymonkey49

Product:	Madame Tussauds
Date:	29/05/06 (2793 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to access, Big Brother Section, Lifelike Waxmodels, Spirit of London

Disadvantages: Expensive, Queueing, Chamber Live,

I had always put off, going to Madame Tussauds due to the price however I decided to part with my money and see it Madame Tussauds was worth the money or justa big time waster.

Getting to Madame Tussauds, is fairly easy. It is situated on Marylebone Road.
To get there by bus, you can use buses; 13, 18, 27, 30, 74, 82, 113, 139, 159, and 274.
To get there by coach there is a drop off and pick up point on Marylebone Road.
Madame Tussauds is in London so getting there by road is quite hard as there is alot of traffic but Madame Tussauds is convieniantly near the A40.
I used the tube which was extremely effective as Baker Street Station is a minutes walk from Madame Tussauds which would be extremely helpful if it was raining. Baker Street is accessible from Bakerloo, Circle, Jubille, Metropolitan, Hammersmith and City lines making it easy to access from anywhere around London.

Prices are extremely high.
Including Chamber Live and from 9:00am to 5:00pm it costs:
Adult - £23.99
Child - £19.99
Senior - £20.99
Family - £74.99
Including Chamber Live from 5:00 to 6:00pm it costs:
Adult - £15.00
Child - £10.00
Senior - £13.00
Family - £50.00
Group Tickets for 10+ people including the Chamber Live and from 9:ooam to 5:00pm it costs:
Adult - £21.60
Child - £18.00
Senior - £18.60
Group tickets including the Chamber Live and from 5:00pm to 6:00pm are:
Adult - £13.50
Child - £9.00
Senior - £11.70
There is also the option of not paying for Chamber Live. If you don't it is about £2 cheaper.
I would not reccommend going after 5:00 pm as it takes at least 1 hour and a half to get round.

I had a free ticket which included free entry to Madame Tussauds, Thorpe Park and many other attractions. I would reccommend you use this.

Queueing can take as much as two hours or more. You can either book onlinr (but it is more expensive.)If you go as a group you can also get in quicker. If you go when everyone is either at work or school, then this cuts down your queing to only 20 mins. I reccommend this.

After you have paid, you go up in the lifts and once the lift doors open you are greeted by flashing cameras, spotlights and interviewers asking questions. This is meant to get you in the mood of world famous celebrities as consquently the next room is full of world famous celebrities. Some of them included Chris Tarrant, Ant and Dec, Kylie and many more. This was the most crowded room by far as many people were posing with their favourite celebrities so it took quite a long time to get a close look at each one. This was a great photo oppurtunity to get your friends taking dozens of pictures with your favourite celebrity.

There were two special sections in this room.

The first one was the Big Brother Diary Room. If you have never seen Bg Brother it is basically a televsion programme where 12 contestants live in a house and each contestant gets evicted each week so there is only one left - the winner. To add to this, there is a diary room where contestants can spill their thoughts on the hous and other contestants. Davina McCall hosts this.
Madame Tussauds, has an exact replica of the diary room where you can share your secrets and have your picture taken (but it costs £4), do a task, nominate someone to leave the Big Brother House, and have your picture taken with Davina McCall.
This attracts Big Brother fans. I thought this was a great idea because it makes you take part as well as look around. It also promots the Big Brother Show.

The Second one was the Shayne Ward room. If you have never heard of Shayne Ward he was the X Faactor Winner. X Factor was a reality tv show where hopefuls sang in front of judges; Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh and Sharon Osbounre and week by week, one of them was voted out.
In Madame Tussauds there is a wax model of Shayne Ward and he gives tips on singing, signing autographs and many more. When I visited this section I noticed that not many people were here and were too busy looking at other models. This section was probably very popular when Shayne Ward was at the top of the charts but in a few years time he will be old news. I think they wasted money and space on this section.

Madame Tussauds knows how to make you split with your money as there are numerous mini sweet shops scattered through Madame Tussauds. Here, they overprice their things so dont give in to childrens nagging. They also have many proffesional photo oppurtunities but agin these are expensive as they cost £4 - what a rip off!

The next room consists of many oscar winning celebrities. Although this room is less popular I thought it was one of the best rooms there was. There were all sorts of classic stars from Marylin Monroe to Pierce Brosman to Micheal Jackson to the Hulk. This room was less crowded so you could spend longer looking at these mondels than the ones in the other room. In this room the models are especially deatiled and you will be surprised that some young children have never heard of Marylin Monroe or Steven Spielberg.

The next room hold many famous politicians such as Tony Blair, George Bush and many more. This held an education value which was good and I was again surprised to here that many children did not know who some of the politicioans were like Adolf Hitler. Talking about Hitler, this was the only place where I felt like I could give hime a punch if I needed. This gave me a lot of satisfaction. In this room there was also a waxmodel of Sleeping Beauty which was made by Madame Tussauds herslf and a wax model of Madame Tussuads. There were waxmodels of sporting stars and the Beatles which were very detailed.

The next place is the CHAMBER LIVE!
This was horrible. I do not reccommend it (especially to the fainthearted!)
I saw the sign to the Chamber LIve it gave no information about what you were meant to be expecting apart from the fact that you shouldn't touch the live actors. I thought they were joking and it was going to be a measly ghost train but how wrong I was...
When you enter the Chamber Live,its pitch black. You can see instruments of torture hanging on the walls and prison cells with the doors wide open. Then, some people jump out at you and scream at you to move along. These people are dressed in rags and have blood and all sorts of other white and lack make up on their face. There were dead people being hung up on ropes but you were not sure if they were going to suddenly come alive and scream at you. You had to survive about 5 minutes of this and I could not wait to see the exit. To make this better, I think they should have given more warning on what it was going to be like as the rest of the day was spoilt due to the fact that I felt sick because of the Chamber Live.
After the Chamber Live, the rest of that part was called the Chamber of Horrors. This was just the Chamber Live without the live actors. Due to the Chamber Live, I couldnt wait to stop seeing instruments of torture even though my friend kept on having to point them out to me.

Finally, there was the Spirit of London Ride. This was a sweet childrens ride where you sat in a taxi and it took you through the history from the plague to the swingin sixties. This was a great end to Madame Tussuads.

Summary: I thoroughly enjoyed my trip and I reccommend it to all ages