Madame Tussaud's is not so much a wax museum as an enclosed amusement park. A weird, moving, sometimes terrifying (to children) collage of exhibitions, panoramas, and stage settings, it manages to be many things to many people, most of the time.

Madame Tussaud attended the court of Versailles and learned her mask-making craft in France. She personally took the death masks from the guillotined heads of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette (still among the exhibits). She moved her museum from Paris to England in 1802. Her exhibition has been imitated, but never with the realism and imagination on hand here. Madame herself molded the features of Benjamin Franklin, whom she met in Paris. All the rest -- from George Washington to John F. Kennedy, Mary Queen of Scots to Sylvester Stallone -- have been subjects for the same painstaking (and breathtaking) replication.

In the well-known Chamber of Horrors -- a kind of dungeon -- are all kinds of instruments of death, along with figures of crime victims. The shadowy presence of Jack the Ripper lurks in the gloom as you walk through a Victorian London street. Present-day criminals are portrayed within the confines of prison. The latest attraction to open here is "The Spirit of London," a musical ride that depicts 400 years of London's history, using special effects that include audio-animatronic figures. Visitors take "time-taxis" that allow them to see and hear "Shakespeare" as he writes and speaks lines, be received by Queen Elizabeth I, and feel and smell the Great Fire of 1666 that destroyed London.

We've seen these exhibitions so many times that we're well over them, but we still remember how fascinated we were the first time we were taken here as kids.

Insider's Tip: To avoid the long lines, sometimes more than an hour in summer, call in advance and reserve a ticket for fast pickup at the entrance. If you don't want to bother with that, be aggressive and form a group of nine people waiting in the queue. With nine, you constitute a group and can go in almost at once through the "group door." Otherwise, go when the gallery first opens or late in the afternoon when crowds have thinned.