jungle guy from a TV show
Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in Amsterdam is not just a place to look at lifelike wax figures, though it is full of them. The journey starts in an elevator with a countdown on the ceiling as to when it will actually go. It opens on the opposite side after reaching the top of the exhibit. It doesn’t really feel much like it is going up, and certainly not so high. The lack of much detectable motion is deceptive though as we found out on the way down.
he’s not real
The soccer guy or whatever he is at the entrance looks very real. Since you’re not actually into the museum yet it might take a couple looks before your brain registers that he’s not an actual person.
she’s not a living person either
You have an option of purchasing all or any photos or videos taken of you as you work your way through the museum. Cameras are also allowed inside to take your own. Many of the sections have some sort of interactive feature and people are allowed to pose with the exhibits.
Santa Claus
Most of the wax figures have a tag or sign of some sort that says who they are, but there are a few that don’t. Some are easily recognizable, others are not.
at the A-list party
Early on we walked into a room with a party scene that seemed to be full of people. After looking around a bit we noticed that very few of those people actually moved. That’s because the only ones who move are visitors to the museum. The rest are wax figures.
Meghan and Harry
Meghan and Harry are there along with Jennifer Aniston and a whole lot of other people. There are other royals in an area specifically for royals, but Meghan and Harry are at the party. That area is called the A-List Party.
ET
The next room has a lot of familiar figures, though not necessarily all human. It’s the film area with famous movie characters, not all of whom were even actual actors.
Shrek
You can take your photo with Shrek or on the bike with ET, or just take photos of the figures.
skaters
The sports room held figures of people we didn’t recognize. They were probably Dutch athletes. Two had ice skates, likely people who performed successfully in the Olympics.
the lady on the bench is real
A fashion show area has a catwalk people can walk on if they want to do the interactive feature for that section. Most of the people in the room were wax figures, but there was a real live lady sitting on a bench. At first we thought she was just a random museum visitor sitting there, but she was actually running the catwalk activity.
view
We skipped most of the interactive features, but took some photos through a window that wasn’t really part of the exhibit. It had great views of the city from a higher vantage point than we had seen before. At the time we did not realize exactly how high that was.
singers
One of the rooms was full of singers. Around a corner at the back hidden from the main view there was a recording booth with Adele in it. People could go into that booth and sing a song from the selection offered with the wax Adele if they wanted to.
Freddy Mercury
There was an exhibit with DJ’s where people could pretend to be one, and one of a TV broadcasting studio where reading the autocues and pretending to be a TV show host was an optional activity.
Anne Frank at the wax museum
One room had Anne Frank in it. You can’t take photos in the actual Anne Frank house, but of course pictures of her in the wax museum are allowed. The room she was in was small, but bigger than the one she had in the real Anne Frank house. The wax one had furniture, which the actual one did not since the Nazis had taken it all when they raided the annex where her family had hidden for over 2 years.
bookcase at the wax museum
There was a wax model of the bookcase that hid the entry to the annex too. Anyone who went to the Anne Frank house and was disappointed about no photos allowed could visit the wax museum to take some.
Dutch royalty
One hallway had world leaders from different places, then Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana from the British royal family followed by some people from the Dutch Royal family. One of them was from the 1500’s, the others more recent.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein sat on the roof of a little booth thing that had some painters and other unknown figures around it at the bottom. One of the painters was Rembrandt, or at least we all thought so. He wasn’t tagged.
Van Gogh
There was a Mona Lisa figurine in a large picture frame with space for people to stand next to her and join in the picture. Van Gogh was there too, with an empty picture frame. People could stand behind that frame and it would make a picture of them that looked like a Van Gogh painting, which was of course available for sale at the gift shop. Of course there’s a gift shop at the end. Nearly all tourist attractions exit through a gift shop. This one was no exception.
wax hands
In one place people could make wax casts of their hand or buy a picture of themselves embedded into a wax cube.
only some of these people are real
Another spot had an actual bar where people could buy drinks. There were two bartenders behind the bar, but only one of them was real. Not all of the patrons in the bar were real either.
wax marvel figure
The last exhibit before the gift shop was of marvel comic figures.
Madam Tussaud herself
Madame Tussaud herself made an appearance in the gift shop. At least a wax figure of her anyway. It was shown working on making a wax head. Some of the figures are very life-like and could easily be mistaken for a real person until you notice they never move, but others are more obviously fake. There was a figure of Michael Jackson in the singers area that looked like an ugly woman. It took the tag attached to the figure with his name on it to know that’s who it was supposed to be.
Elvis was all alone on a seemingly endless stairway
The way out from the gift shop is down a seemingly endless stairway. It didn’t feel like the elevator went up much so it was a bit of a surprise to have to go down so many flights of stairs and then down and down and keep going down some more to get back out to street level at the end. There were some odd wax things on the walls along that stairway. Eventually we came across a life-sized Elvis Presley looking a bit worse for the wear. Maybe that’s why he’s in the exit rather than in the section with the other musicians.
Cruise Stories 