Where Were You LeVar?

When I was little I was OBSESSED with the show Reading Rainbow... well except for the egypt episode (I could never quite get passed the part where they explained that during the mummy embalming process they scrambled the brains with a piece of metal and then let it drip out through the dead guy's nose. eww) but I digress.

One of my favorite episodes was the one where LeVar visited the Movieland Wax Museum and had a wax figure made of himself.

 

This is the whole episode, but if you go to about 15:30, you'll see that part.

While you're there though, scroll back about 3 or so minutes and you'll

get to see some bakers making some of the most amazing cakes ever.

I think this episode may have helped to inspire my love of cake decorating, too.

That is seriously the coolest thing ever. 

So imagine how excited I was to see a Groupon deal to visit the Madame Tussauds museum in DC! I snapped up two tickets (I made a friend of mine come with me) and over the weekend we went to see those waxy guys in all their glory.

Madame Tussauds was very cool. The first thing you do when you get there (after watching the token learn the history of our museum movie) is get your picture taken with all the presidents via a green screen photo shoot. Then, you are immediately thrown into the President's Gallery, where you get to meet all 44 American presidents.

First impression... James Madison was tiny.

As in 5' 4" tiny... at 5' 5 1/2" I'm taller than him by an inch and a half.

Second impression... I was slightly weirded out by just how real everything looked. I kept thinking someone was standing next to me, turning around to say something, and realizing that it was just George or James or Teddy. Then I would feel silly.

But my favorite part of the museum was how interactive it was. There are quiz stations everywhere that test your knowledge about the founders and founding of our country, army (WWII) history, the wax figure making process, and a bunch more. Elspeth and I rocked the colonial history quiz (we got 10 out of 10) but completely failed the army one (3/10)... that's probably because growing up in VA we got a healthy dose of virginia (and consequently our nation's birth) history but not a lot of in depth learning about the foreign nonsense that was the second world war (which wasn't really covered too much in the SOLs when we took them). 

Anyway, they totally encourage interaction with the statues which was cool and sometimes even provided props to enhance the experience. For example, one photo op featured Jackie O and JFK as disembarked from Air Force 1. They provided faux fir jackets for non-germaphobic people (aka not me) to put on to join the first couple in a paparazzi photo storm that came complete with flashing lights and the sounds of cameras clicking away and people screaming. 

We did get into the interactive action a bit though...

Just hanging out with my ancestor Pres. Grant.
I definitely think you can see the family resemblance!

Not sure what's going on here...

He's about to get shot... morbid I know.

Other highlights included the Rosa Parks bus experience that literally scared me out of my seat, remembering what Al Roker looked like before he got skinny (his statue really needs to be updated), and of course, getting up close and personal with Baden Powell and Johnny Depp.

The founder of the boy scouts indeed. Humph.
(this is a super veiled reference to the Muppets Christmas
Carol which I watched wayyy to much last month)
On a completely different vein, you should totally read the book The Radioactive Boy Scout.
I read it in high school and it was kind of amazing.

I took this for my favorite roomie Jenny.

The ONLY downside was the absence of LeVar. I had sort of hoped his statue had found its way to DC.