Madam Tussaud

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February 10th, 2008

Madam Tussaud's Wax Museum Washington, DC

Madam Tussaud's is located at: 1025 F Street, NW. It's located near St Patrick's Catholic Church and within walking distance to the National Mall. Parking: 900 Block of E Street, NW: Parking garage located on E Street between 9th & 10th near the corner of 9th and E Streets, NW across from the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Headquarters. Parking costs about $10-$20 depending on the day, time and length of stay. Warning, if you take EXACTLY one hour, you get charged for another hour. I suggest parking on the side streets (metered parking but hard to get) or park far away and metro in. Cost of the museum is a rip off in my opinion. With only 50 wax figures and not much to do (and is always so crowded you can't get a great unobstructed view (I did but this is due to cropping and split timing). Cost is 25.00 per adult upon arrival. However, there is a tip: many of the brochures have coupons in them. Some in the lobby even. You can pick up a coupon in the lobby and give it to them. One coupon covers each member of the party. So if the coupon is 5.00 off, then each person's admission is 20.00. In my opinion, this adventure takes under a half an hour and NOT worth the money. For three adults plus parking, it cost us 90.00 and we didn't buy any souvenirs. Another tip to save money is to preorder your tickets online. They do not tell you the REAL admission price on the website or brochures, but the price online is cheaper so order ahead of time.

Three of the 50 figures are free because they are in the windows. So that leave you 47 figures to see. You can get up close to them and even touch them. You can put your hands around them and take a photo and on a couple of the figures, you can interact by putting on an article of clothing (Robert E Lee and Jackie Kennedy). you can also stand behind a podium and pretend you're a White House speaker, or sit behind the replica of the President's desk. That's pretty much it for the interactive part. Other than that, the only things to see are some plaques on the wall beside a couple of the figures and a gift shop. There is no place to eat. There is a bathroom and some vending machines on the way out. That's about it. I did not feel it was worth the money. I was expecting to see a little more, have some sounds or movies or something playing. But there's nothing but posed figures and what I described above. I guess it might be expensive because the figures are costly to make. Oh, there IS a wall with an explanation of the history and how they make the figures.

Here is a list of all the figures not shown below: Whoopie Goldberg, Abraham Lincoln, an Indian, Madonna, a "regular" person, George Washington, Muhammad Ali, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, Ella Fitzgerald, Benjamin Franklin, Bob Dylan, Ben Franklin, Harry Truman, Ronald Regan, Robert E Lee, George HW Bush, George Clooney, King George III, Bob Woodward, J Edgar Hoover, Tiger Woods, Marion Barry, Beyonce Knowles, Marvin Gaye, Evander Holyfield, Thomas Jefferson, Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, Duke Ellington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.