I. Opening
This December, after concluding her stint as a holiday performer at Chessington World of Adventures, a family friend was kind enough to supply my eldest sister with four free tickets good for use at any of the various properties owned by Merlin Entertainment, the company behind the park. The only catch was that we needed to make the bookings before the end of the day.
As she and I chatted in the kitchen of our family home, deciding how best to use the tickets, I was shocked to hear about the extent of the monopoly Merlin holds over the global tourist attraction scene. In and around Greater London alone, other than the museums, galleries, and London Zoo (most of which aren’t privately owned at all) you’d struggle to find any major theme park, aquarium, exhibition, or similar variety of family-day-out activity they don’t either operate or own outright. Sea Life, the Dungeons, Thorpe Park, Alton Towers, Chessington, all the Legolands – they even own the London Eye, as well as its Blackpool and Sydney counterparts – and, of course, the various incarnations of Madame Tussauds found across the world, all sixteen of them, including the famous London original.
I had never been to Madame Tussauds before. My sister had once, on a school trip years ago, but couldn’t remember it very well, and this was also the case for our younger sister, who would soon be coming home for Christmas. The core concept had never appealed much to me, but we’re always looking for outdoor activities that our youngest brother Isaak might enjoy – he’s twenty-one, has Down Syndrome, and is unbelievably stubborn, with a prodigious knowledge of popular culture. Still, I thought, with free tickets, how bad could it be? At worst, I expected a decent way to kill a few hours over the hazy post-Christmas days. We made a booking for four on Friday 29th December at 2:30pm, and I awaited the date with cautious optimism.
II. Crowds
When the day came, the bad omens were immediate. I had somehow thought we’d booked the 30th, and got myself fairly hungover from the night before, not realising my mistake until an hour before we were supposed to leave that afternoon. Despite his earlier enthusiasm, at the last minute Isaak took a great deal of persuading to get ready, as usual. Then, on the 207 to Shepherds Bush Market, where we would catch the Circle line to Baker Street, I was sitting next to him with a lukewarm coffee in my hand when the bus made a sudden, juddering brake. Everybody shrieked as we lurched forwards, and when I looked down, I saw that the coffee had gone everywhere – but mostly on Isaak’s trousers.
Still, we soldiered on, me drying his clothes as best I could with a fistful of napkins grabbed from a nearby Wenzel’s, while our sisters did their darndest to mitigate my combination of guilty embarrassment and sleep-deprived gloom. By the time we arrived, we were a good ten minutes late, and the size of the queue loomed large.
In retrospect, this was the first giveaway. Apart from the waxworks, the one thing I always associated with Madame Tussauds is the ever-present mass of people lined up outside virtually any time you pass. If I’d checked the 70,000 plus Google reviews before visiting, it might have prepared me for just how oversubscribed the place is. There are countless examples of customers bemoaning the enormous quantities of people let in at a time, often supplying photo evidence of the chaos that results. According to LondonTickets.co.uk, Tussauds receives an average of 2.5 million guests per year, amounting to nearly 7,000 a day – around half the number seen by the Natural History Museum (the most popular indoor attraction in the UK in 2022), yet packed into a space that’s barely a quarter of its size in square footage, and over a shorter period of time; Tussauds closes two hours earlier than the Museum.
What do they expect will happen? Almost instantly after entering, we were swallowed up in the kind of heaving, aimless crowds normally reserved for festivals, football games, or rush hour – the kind where you periodically can’t move at all, stuck stranded shoulder-to-shoulder for minutes at a time at the mercy of the bottleneck. They needn’t even bother with the waxworks; if you squinted, you’d think the room was full of them.
That’s the irony of Tussauds in particular being so recklessly packed with bodies: half the time, the waxworks are actually too realistic to spot. They tend to be spaced out fairly randomly, at ground level and in naturalistic poses, and few are spotlit, signposted, or otherwise emphasised at all.
Presumably, this is meant to increase the verisimilitude of the experience. It certainly increases your chance of being squashed. The constant flow of people taking selfies meant that pockets of empty space had formed around the most popular waxworks as passersby maintained their distance so as not to disturb the pictures. Others, meanwhile, attempted in vain to form their own queues to individual models, which in turn infringed on other people’s queues, which of course were totally untenable because of all the people barging past, deliberately or otherwise. I found these patterns in the swarming murmurations morbidly fascinating, but then I always was quite good at dissociating in a jam.
III. Design
We had already begun to suspect that the luxurious experience promised by Merlin’s marketing might not be on the cards after all. Clearly the goal was simply to feed us through the building as fast as possible, like so much human playdough. And yet everywhere we went, everyone was confused about where we were meant to go.
Unlike a typical museum or gallery, in which guests are free to choose their own route and visit different areas in whatever order they like, Tussauds essentially follows a one-way system. If it is possible to go back on oneself – futile anyway, given the crowds – the layout seems to deliberately discourage it (you’d think a house of wax might have a more flexible design). Travel between rooms occurs invariably either via a lengthy staircase, a narrow corridor, or some combination of the two. The walls generally lack signage or navigational aids and are often blank, even unfinished-looking. It all looks pretty uninviting; good thing the human traffic’s there to keep things moving forward.
One exception was the entrance to the Star Wars zone, which distinguished itself from all the other dark and empty staircases by blaring John Williams’s theme music at full volume. Unfortunately, at this point the crowd began to surge unbearably. My siblings and I were lucky to be able to duck into a corner, where we waited near a fire exit for the storm to die down. We theorised this influx might have had something to do with the Marvel 4D Experience, which we had just passed, but couldn’t be sure. I honestly don’t know how long we stood there, sweating, watching slack-jawed as the stream of people just kept coming and coming and coming. At one stage I even tried the fire exit, but in true nightmare logic, it was locked.
It was here I noticed one man holding a young child to his chest and pulling another along behind him, trying for unknown reasons to get back to the previous room and being forced to push desperately against the current while the strings and horns of the orchestral score blared majestically in the background. It was like a scene from Titanic. The image seemed to sum it all up, somehow, and I remembered dimly that all these thousands of people had actually been charged for the privilege of being here. I began to ponder how this place might fare in the event of any genuine emergency, and was momentarily overcome with delirious laughter.
IV. Safety, Value, Boundaries
They say comedy is the best medicine, but unfortunately, Merlin appears to have taken this literally. I can almost forgive the overselling of tickets, the false advertising, the thoughtless design – but Madame Tussauds really does feel unsafe. For one thing, we found barely a single staff member stationed anywhere that wasn’t a café, shop, photo opportunity, or other such commercial pitstop. It was especially felt in the liminal spaces, the numerous corridors and staircases, where the risk of crushing was at its most dangerous. These were always empty.
While it could be that the building is outfitted with such highly sophisticated security and health and safety measures so as to remove the need for any physical staff presence at all, I personally wouldn’t bet on it. Even if that were somehow true, the sense of danger is a problem in itself. In the absence of any visible security or authority, there is little to prevent confusion and panic on behalf of the guests. Thankfully, my response seemed to be to enter a kind of zen state of silent outrage, but God help anyone with neurodivergence or mental health difficulties which might be triggered by such situations, let alone those with mobility issues or accessibility requirements – a point I will return to later.
Again, it all raises the question of what the hell you are paying for. My group were lucky with our free tickets, but normally admittance starts at £33 for standard entry and £50 for fast track (the queue for which was barely any quicker, from where I was standing). The puny discounts offered by a group booking, meanwhile, reduce the price to £30 per adult and £27 per child. Even for London, this is bad – significantly more expensive than Merlin’s own Sea Life London Aquarium, for example. Who could have guessed it is cheaper to house over 500 species of sea animal than a few dozen waxwork dummies – even if keeping the animals alive is a different story.
Next to such egregious prices, the cheapness of the product looks even more stark, particularly given the emphasis Tussaud’s own marketing places on glitz and glamour. Of course, most customers know it’s only meant to be a fun day out, not the actual equivalent of an Academy Awards ceremony. But we got in for free and it still felt like a rip-off. Only patrons boasting the most disposable of incomes could fail to wonder what it is their money is actually meant to be going towards.
It can’t be the waxworks themselves, whose very presentation belies their supposed value. The crowds, the layout, and the lack of staff presence all mean there is nothing to protect the works from accidents or abuse. We saw plenty of examples of people touching them, bumping into them, and otherwise messing around; the most memorable for me was a pair of young children swinging from Anakin Skywalker’s hands as they clenched a lightsaber, his fingers bending and stretching like silly putty, body rocking and swaying as his face maintained its permanent glare.
I doubt Tussauds would officially condone such behaviour, but neither have they put anything in place to stop it. In fact, I’d argue the idea of the waxworks as sensory playthings is the unique selling point of the franchise as it stands today, integral to its purpose as one, big selfie factory. Most forms of exhibit place some kind of barrier between the viewer and the display, but at Tussauds, the waxworks are presented as an interactive feature of the environment, to be explored and probed for your pleasure.
There is an undeniably sensual element to it all. On the official website, visitors are invariably depicted posing intimately with the models, most of which, let’s not forget, are lifelike recreations of world-famous sex symbols at the height of their powers. At the time of writing, for example, the option to purchase the Ultimate VIP ticket, Tussauds’ highest luxury, is illustrated with an image of a guest gawking in disbelief at the prominent cleavage of the Priyanka Chopra model.
The fetishistic aspect of the waxworks is obviously intentional, not only in their broad sexualisation, but in their status as objects meant to capture the essence of some venerated spirit. We’re compelled to view them as attractive, fascinating, yet also soulless. It’s understandable that certain guests will express this attitude physically, as with the children freely swinging from Anakin’s inanimate hands. To what extent you think it’s right or wrong to jostle, ogle, or grope a realistic wax simulation of a stranger’s body is up to you. Personally, I found it creepy enough just looking at them, although I did enjoy identifying which men were shorter than me (I see you, Brad Pitt).
Nonetheless, it seems undeniable that there’s a measure of disrespect in this kind of treatment, which Madame Tussauds at best permits, and at worst, tacitly encourages. The waxworks are the franchise’s entire raison d’etre, not to mention the principle commodity its customers are paying for – yet they appear to regard them with nearly the same degree of indifference as they do the quality of the customer experience.
Who are the real dummies, you might ask?
V. Interlude
At this point, I’d be remiss not to mention what was for me, the most disappointing part of a very disappointing day. Yes, worse than accidentally spilling coffee all over my disabled brother’s trousers. The story involves the only two examples I can recall where there actually was a member of staff present who wasn’t just there to sell something, although unfortunately, neither inspired much hope. (For the record, I have nothing against any of Tussauds’ employees, and place all blame squarely at the cloven feet of Merlin Entertainment itself.)
We were around halfway through our journey when we found we were being crammed into a particularly tight hallway which led around an even narrower corner. Here, a young man was partially blocking our path. He appeared to be dressed as a confusing mixture between a sixteenth-century beefeater and a nineties raver, with a little snare drum around his neck which he was beating rhythmically while dancing on the spot, grinning and chanting “Seven-minute-wait – that way! Seven-minute-wait – that way!” over and over again in a Cockney accent.
Once it was clear he wasn’t a collective hallucination we were having, a few of us asked the man what he meant, as well as some other general questions, since he was the first staff member we had seen in ages. But it was no use. No matter what, he just kept grinning and shouting about the seven minute wait which was that way. Having worked for some time in a central London theatre myself, I think he was actually enjoying our confusion in an anarchic sort of way, no doubt having long since tired of his minor supporting role.
We squeezed onwards, past the possibly imaginary drumming man and up a staircase to discover we were now in the queue for the Spirit of London ride, a fairly slow rollercoaster consisting of a series of animatronic scenes depicting London’s history. If there is a way to bypass the ride and proceed straight to the following areas, then we must have missed it, but I assume there is, because as we would soon find out (and as I later learned had been displayed somewhere previously in tiny writing), “the ride is not suitable for non-ambulant guests”.
My brother Isaak is as ambulant as the next person, but not especially quick on his feet. When we saw that the ride was constantly moving, and that to get on, you had to jump nimbly into your car, it gave me pause.
There was one staff member monitoring the mouth of the queue, while another monitored the hopping. I asked the first man if they’d be able to slow the ride down at all so my brother could board it safely. (We once had a similar issue with a moving boat ride at Legoland Windsor, where the staff were nothing but helpful and understanding). The man suggested we just give it our best attempt, and in the few seconds I had to process this non-response, suddenly our turn came up. Again I tried to explain the issue to the woman monitoring the cars, who seemed surprised and confused; I can’t remember what she said, but it wasn’t helpful.
The rest happened very fast. The woman asked us to hop on – we tried to, but Isaak couldn’t, and then she was shouting, and as I had already hopped on to demonstrate, I quickly hopped off again, and there was more shouting, and the next thing we knew, someone somewhere had stopped the ride. My siblings and I took our seats, frustrated, humiliated, and apologising for some reason, after having been quite literally pushed into a ride we didn’t know existed, which was not accessible to us, denied the help we asked for, and publicly embarrassed for our trouble. For the record, I found the ride itself to be perfectly fine. Its depiction of history was quite grisly, but it was a welcome respite from nearly being crushed.
A quick note on the issue of accessibility: while looking through the Google reviews, I found accounts from numerous other disabled patrons expressing disappointment with their experience. A woman described showing up for her booking only to discover she had run afoul of Tussauds’ policy that only one wheelchair user may be admitted to the building per hour, and was told she would have to come back later. Their website’s accessibility guide states they can welcome a maximum of “three wheelchair users into the building at any one time”, only to mention a few lines later that “we are only able to book one wheelchair on the hour each hour”. I have tried and failed to understand this, because it isn’t very well-written (and I assume that’s meant to be ‘wheelchair user’ in the second quote), but I’d argue the explanation needs some work – if not the policy itself.
On the one hand, I’m fairly relieved and surprised that someone at Tussauds has at least thought about this issue, given all the problems with overcrowding and spatial organisation and their implications for disabled patrons. But remember, this is one of the most iconic, popular, and expensive attractions in London – in the entire world, no less. The list of careless oversights should not be anywhere near this long. I’m glad nothing too bad from the unpreparedness we encountered towards our access requirements, but it easily could have.
VI. Exploitation
So: Madame Tussauds is unsafe, overpriced, lazy, and pretentious. But I have to wonder, was it ever thus? Is there room for improvements to be made, or is the concept itself inherently broken?
I’ve already mentioned that Tussauds appears to have almost as little respect for the waxworks as it does for the customers; this seems central to the issue. Celebrity waxworks as an idea are interesting and valuable almost entirely as a function of their accuracy; the closer they get us to the feeling of being in the presence of the real person, the more we are moved to care. At the same time, we are encouraged to remember that they are only objects, inanimate replicas whose lifelessness gives us the freedom to photograph, touch, and, really, do whatever we like with (or as much as we think we can get away with in a busy, largely unsupervised crowd).
All at once, Tussauds is pulling us in two opposing directions, towards glorification and trivialisation; the sacred and the profane. Equally, as customers, we have become confused; we’ve paid all this money for something demonstrably not worth it; we question what it is we were expecting in the first place, what exactly we came here to do, as at every turn we are met with simultaneous disregard and overstimulation.
The whole space suspends us in a limbo wherein nothing quite works as it ought to, and meaning is hard to parse at all. It’s hard to blame anyone for acting like an idiot, given the circumstances. Part of me is tempted to just go ahead and condemn the whole thing as nothing more than a foolish bad taste exercise which we should have known better than to ever bother with. But then I remember who is actually profiting from all this.
My thoughts went especially existential when I was faced with David Bowie’s latest waxwork, a relatively new addition reproducing his Ziggy Stardust persona. On the whole, I thought most of the models I saw were decently lifelike, if a bit too shiny, and I respect the expertise of the artists who create them. But this thing is seriously odd looking. If David Bowie actually was as small, skinny, and wrongly proportioned in real life as this model would have you believe (with an outrageously oversized face and head) well, you could have fooled me. Looking at it, I was barely reminded of David Bowie at all. I certainly didn’t feel any closer to having seen the real man.
Of course, I’ll never meet the real man, because as I write this, next week he will have been dead for eight years. This waxwork is an entirely posthumous creation. In fact, when it was unveiled in 2022 it was done so as part of Tussauds’ new Impossible Music Festival exhibit – so named for the very fact it contains the likenesses of so many deceased artists: Mercury, Hendrix, Winehouse to name a few. And they’re hardly the only ones. Across all versions of Madame Tussauds, the majority of the waxworks have always depicted people who are long since passed away.
Supposedly, the idea is to honour the dead. But does it? For some, having oneself immortalised in wax may not feel meaningfully different than any other medium, like photographs or videos (although I’d argue it’s a far more intimate means of capture; imagine instead that it wasn’t your body, but your spouse’s, your child’s, or your parent’s being reproduced down to the hair, to be propped up forever in a showroom). How comfortable you find the idea is subjective – but the dead cannot consent to anything.
Corporations have been profiting from the posthumous use of celebrity likenesses ever since they first gained the technology to do so, and while controversy often follows, it appears to be something of a losing battle. As is often the case with science, variations upon and new techniques for this practice are being developed faster than we can morally keep up with. Exploiting the dead has never been easier. If Tussauds really wanted to honour deceased stars, they could put all that ticket money towards any number of public statues, memorials, or charities, but make no mistake: their aim is nothing more than to make themselves as much money as possible by whatever means they can.
VII. Horror
This brings us to the Chamber of Horrors. Due to the 16+ age restriction, it is the only part of the experience which is entirely optional in the one-way system, and we skipped it on our visit – though my brother is quite the horror film buff, he was in no mood for it by the time we got there. But in our curiosity, later that day we watched a YouTube video by a fellow named Dean of the Dead which showed a full POV recording of the area. Similar to how the main displays include waxworks of fictional characters like Shrek and King Kong, we’d assumed the titular Horrors would mainly refer to famous movie monsters and villains. Instead, we were disturbed to find Dean’s camera lingering over the likenesses of real life serial killers like Dennis Nilsen, John Christie, and John George Haigh. You can even find, in a particularly pointless bit of capitulation, a three-piece suit belonging to Haigh which was ‘donated’ to Madame Tussauds at the killer’s own personal request.
It’s one thing to be interested in the details of true crime stories, but these tributes go far beyond that. Tussauds’ waxworks are inherently idolising. It’s the entire point of them; they glorify, they immortalise, they claim to bottle the essence of the stars. What can be gained from this fetishisation of genuinely evil men? A superficial thrill? Most visitors won’t even be aware of who John George Haigh is before they’re confronted with a loving recreation of one of his murder scenes, insisting by its very existence that this is something worth knowing, worth seeing, worth immortalising. No weak appeal to educational value can possibly justify the moral compromise at play. Dennis Nilsen has victims by proxy who are still alive today; the suffering he caused is still happening. This is crass exploitation and nothing more.
Honestly, in this case, I’m not even sure it’s economically motivated. No matter the draw of true crime, couldn’t Merlin stand to make just as much if not more money by shelling out for the licensing fees and sticking Annabelle, Ghostface, and The Babadook all in the same photo booth? To me, it stems from a different kind of hubris, beyond greed. The Chamber of Horrors has been a staple of Madame Tussauds ever since there actually was a Madame Tussaud; after so many years, the owners might simply see it as their prerogative to turn the suffering of others into their own personal freakshow.
The amorality isn’t even consistent. Recently, in light of his proud antisemitism, the London branch rightly removed their Kanye West waxwork from public view, moving it to their archive (disturbingly located, as it turns out, in my native Acton), where it is currently gathering dust alongside Hitler’s, which used to occupy the Chamber of Horrors before being similarly removed. By contrast, they plainly destroyed the figures of people like Jimmy Savile and Gary Glitter. It’s easy to imagine Merlin, in all their spinelessness, wanting to wait and see if Kanye might not regain his popularity one day and again become financially viable – but I wouldn’t hold my breath for Hitler doing the same. Perhaps they’re saving him for their upcoming Impossible Election show.
Meanwhile, the men remembered exclusively for their depraved serial murders retain pride of place in a special exhibit all to themselves. And it is a source of pride; there is considerably more effort put into the Chamber of Horrors than most other areas, including performers playing police officers and old-timey bartenders, lending a theatrical element to the proceedings not present in any other display. It’s a pity for Kanye’s waxwork that he didn’t reveal himself to be a serial killer as well as a hatemonger.
Of course, these kinds of ethical hypocrisies are not exclusive to, and did not originate from, Madame Tussauds. Nonetheless, the franchise stands as an excellent example of the power and influence they have in our society. On our visit, I was genuinely struck by the sheer moral ambivalence permeating every single inch of the experience, bleeding into every aspect of its workings and failures. The end product is, inevitably, bereft of joy or meaning.
My siblings and I are not particularly fussy with our entertainment. We enjoy reality TV shows, junk food, and romantic comedies as much as any plebeian. In fact, it’s rare for us to uniformly agree on the quality of anything. But when our visit was finally over, we rushed out into the street as it was the last day of school again. The only thing that stopped me from running up to all the freshly arrived people waiting in the queue and screaming “Go home! Turn back! It’s not too late for you!” was the burning desire to go home which had been festering inside us all for the past hour or so. At some point the whole experience had crossed over from mere disappointment to a strangely invigorating kind of inspiration. It was just so bad; unforgettably, mind-blowingly. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I started writing.
VIII. Closing
Here is why it matters. Merlin Entertainment has a stranglehold over the entire worldwide industry of paid leisure attractions which is second only to Disney – especially in and around Greater London. They do not deserve it (as if anyone could). Their standards are laughable, and their disrespect for their audience is palpable. Even if you don’t buy any of the moral arguments, there are the issues of safety. If you don’t buy those, there are the issues of accessibility. If you don’t buy those, there are the issues of overcrowding. If you don’t buy those, there are the extortionate ticket prices. I was able to write this entire article about just one of their attractions. If I had unlimited funds, I’d gladly do a full review of all their UK attractions, and I’m not optimistic they would be much better – although the theme parks at least do avoid a lot of the same problems just by virtue of being outdoors.
Incidentally, Madame Tussauds tends to respond to a lot of the negative Google reviews (although as of writing this article, they continue to conspicuously ignore mine). Predictably, though, they only ever offer stock replies and repeated non-apologies that “the experience was not quite what you expected”, assuring that they will pass the feedback on to someone or other. Merlin is a multinational billionaire corporation. All they care about is money. They will never seek to improve their standards without a strong financial incentive; if we customers don’t start demanding better and voting with our wallets, things will only continue to get worse.
Describing my experience to a friend with whom I had, coincidentally, recently visited the Sea Life London Aquarium for the first time in the several years since Merlin acquired it, we recalled the similar issues we’d had with that place: too many people let in at once; a lack of freedom to explore; a pervading sense of cheapness, crudity, and corner-cutting; too many bare, undecorated corridors and staircases (it’s honestly comical how abruptly the Aquarium concludes. You step out of the gift shop and instantly find yourself in the middle of a network of blank, lino-floored corridors, following them unceremoniously to the grim lobby of the County Hall building, to emerge, blinking, out onto the Southbank. We thought we’d died and gone to purgatory.)
As my friend and I talked, she likened my description of being inside Madame Tussauds to a huge abattoir, a great factory where customers are fed in like cattle to be bled dry and processed as quickly as possible. Once you are in – once you’ve paid – then you cease to be their problem. Your purpose becomes to get out of the way and make room for the next batch, ending up, ultimately, in her words, as little more than ‘Merlin mincemeat’. There could not be a more perfect metaphor.
I would like to think it’s all unsustainable, that one day, the whole Merlin Entertainment empire will collapse under its own weight to make way for new attractions, or at least new owners who might be less willing to sacrifice people’s dignity in the ruthless pursuit of profit. It’s ultimately their dignity too, after all, their name on the line. You can’t dismiss the bad reviews forever. As Merlin should very well know, reputations are a lot like waxwork dummies: they might look good for a while, but too much attention, too much time, too much heat and they will simply melt away, revealing nothing at all.