Madame Tussauds Interactive Wax Attraction

Las Vegas, Nevada

Madame Tussauds invites the paying public to "interact" with "the people we would love to be," and to "do the things that celebrities do." This means that you get to lie in bed with a Hugh Hefner dummy, shoot hoops next to a Shaquille O'Neal dummy, and stand on a stage with an Elvis Presley dummy. You also get to grope them while your family and friends take pictures, which seems especially popular with the J-Lo and Tupac Shakur dummies (Tupac, although it isn't mentioned in his exhibit, was gunned down only a couple of blocks from here.).

J-Lo is programmed to blush when her other cheeks are fondled. A sign suggests that you "Place your hand on her most famous asset and see for yourself!"

This intimacy is more than most wax museums will allow, and we applaud the breaking down of barriers between tourist and dummy. We also realize that this is only the first step toward a sunny future in which we will actually do stuff with (or to) celebrity robots.

For now, most wax museum patrons seem to do minimal fondling of the figures, content to interact where instructed by signs, or just snap pix of family members with the famous and powerful.

The combination of artful lighting, hi-tech wax modeling, and the placement of the dummies in the middle of the rooms make it difficult at times to distinguish contemplative tourists from the frozen celebrities. When the "dummy" next to you suddenly moves, it can be unnerving. Perhaps in the future Madame Tussauds will mix wax versions of tourists in with the celebrities, making the experience even more surreal than it is now.

The museum ends with the "Spirit of America" room, and among the scattered dummies of JFK and Jackie, the Apollo 11 astronauts, and Abraham Lincoln, stands one of Princess Di. Isn't she, um, British? We surmise that she was too good to waste, and that she didn't quite fit in with the theme of the Vegas entertainer room, the NASCAR room, or the Rock n' Roll/pole dancer room.

No one but us seemed to notice or care -- one visitor was busy giving George W. Bush the finger, while another pretended to knee him in the nuts. Now that's the Spirit of America!

Tussauds has wax museums across the globe, but the Las Vegas attraction is the only one that offers its visitors "the opportunity to buy something truly unique -- themselves." For $300,000 (minimum) Madame Tussauds will create a wax dummy of you. $50,000 minimum will get a dummy of your pet.

These are for private consumption only, for although Madame Tussauds reassures us that "They are no longer the stars -- you are!," a moment's reflection will confirm that no one would pay $24.00 to lie in a bed next to a wax dummy of you.