National Wax Museum Plus

Coordinates: 53°20′48″N 6°15′32″W / 53.3466°N 6.2588°W / 53.3466; -6.2588

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Wax Museum in Dublin Temple Bar Dublin, Ireland

The National Wax Museum Plus

An Músaem Céarach Náisiúnta Plus

Location within Central Dublin

Established

June 1983

Location

22-25 Westmoreland Street, Dublin 2 Temple Bar Dublin, Ireland

Type

wax museum

Owner

Patrick Dunning

Public transit access

Stephen\'s Green Luas stop (Green Line)
College Green bus stops

Nearest parking

Park Rite Fleet Street Car Park

Website

wax museum plus.ie

The National Wax Museum Plus is a waxworks in Dublin, Ireland. First opened in 1983 as the National Wax Museum, it was later relocated and renamed.

Wax figures exhibition at the museum

The National Wax Museum, as it was then known, was initially situated in Granby Row Dublin 1, close to Parnell Square on the city's north side. It was opened in 1983 by the Lord Mayor of Dublin. In the past, it was a former site for prayer rooms converted into a cinema called Plaza Cinema (before that, Bethesda Chapel) and then into a waxworks. Still, this building was demolished to make way for a hotel.

The old Wax Museum in Granby Row had closed in 2005, and the site was to be redeveloped as the Maldron Hotel Parnell Square. In 2009, the museum, which had now changed its name to Wax Museum Plus, found a new location at 4 Fosters Place, Temple Bar. On December 4, 2016, The Irish Stock Exchange purchased the Foster\'s Place location, and The Wax Museum was relocated to the Lafayette Building in the center of Dublin, more specifically, 22–25 Westmoreland Street. The museum opened on 25 April 2017 with new exhibitions and an augmented reality app.

Donie Cassidy, a Senator and former TD, previously owned the museum. It is now owned by Music Recording entrepreneur Patrick Dunning, owner of Grouse Lodge Studios.

Models

A Game of Thrones exhibit in the Wax Museum in Dublin.

In the previous Wax Museum building, there was a mixture of wax figures and various other figures that were not modeled in wax (mainly because the wax materials were not suited to such. For example, the character of The Lord of the Rings, Gollum is made from fiber glass rather than wax). This can be to do with problems relating to the figure\'s weight and skin tones (wax is a heavy material and also useful for a basis of realistic human skin tones) or simply on the artist\'s style of work.

The front of the building bore a striking mythical Irish giant. At the entrance were some figures, including Gollum. The path through the museum brings visitors to a scene with figures such as Crocodile Dundee, E.T., and Irish sporting and entertainment stars. It went upstairs through a winding staircase, surrounding a jack-in-the-beanstalk location, complete with a giant. From there, visitors entered the Children\'s World (with the head of the outside Giant peaking in) and witnessed various storybook characters and children\'s television show characters. The main attractions were tunnels children could crawl through, the Flintstones, the Power Rangers, and Bob the Builder.

Visitors would then move downstairs to witness a scene of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and then to view many Irish figures of historical importance, including Wolfe Tone, the 1916 Rising, and Michael Collins. Various Irish presidents followed, including Éamon de Valera, Mary McAleese, and Taoisigh. This led to figures of Irish theatre, writers, television presenters, and G.A.A. stars. They were moving from Irish figures to famous world leaders and figures such as Princess Diana, World War II leaders, and modern American and Middle-Eastern and Northern Irish leaders of the Northern troubles. Then, visitors could witness a re-enactment of Leonardo da Vinci\'s Last Supper painting in three-dimensional wax form.

As visitors went downstairs again, they passed Christopher Reeve as Superman and saw the Pope and Cardinals standing on top of the actual Popemobile from Pope John Paul II\'s visit to Ireland in 1979. Visitors then entered a room with the Simpsons family while a screen would play a film for people to sit down and enjoy or take a photo opportunity in a set of medieval stocks. Visitors were then given a choice to enter the Chamber of Horrors (or bypass it and enter the next phase after it), with horror characters such as Dracula, Frankenstein, the Werewolf, and the Mummy. Also displayed were figures like Hannibal Lecter as he rattled prison bars, the X-files alien, and Freddy Krueger, amongst others.

Visitors then entered another tunnel opportunity for children again and then onto the \"Hall of Megastars\" with figures like Michael Jackson, David Bowie, U2, Tina Turner, Ronan Keating, and Irish rock star Phil Lynott taking the stage. The tour then ended with entertaining scenes dedicated to Batman with Jack Nicholson as the Joker, Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, and Star Wars with Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn in battle with Darth Maul as well as Yoda and young Anakin Skywalker.

Wax figure damages

In June 2007, while the wax figures were in storage awaiting a new home, break-ins occurred in the warehouses. Vandals, including smashed heads, damaged many statistics. Several statistics were also stolen, including Bob the Builder and many army-style uniforms from scenes such as the 1916 Rising. This incident created even more challenging circumstances to relocate the Wax Museum. The museum\'s head sculptor, P.J. Heraty, was assigned the job of revamping and, often, recreating the broken figures.