Things to do in Victoria B.C. Canada: Royal London Wax Museum

In the heart of the tourist district of Victoria on Vancouver Island sits the Royal London Wax Museum. For a small entrance fee you get at least an hours worth of history and awe.

We were not planning on visiting the museum. But we had some time to kill and it is a good thing we did. We had a great time. The place is actually very misleading. When we entered all we saw were a couple rooms and what they call Royalty Row. Here they had wax dummies of several of Englands royalty. The most popular is the dummy of Princess Diana. After you view Royalty Row we thought that was it. And we were pissed off. We were actually thinking of asking for our money back. But at the very end, on the right side was a door. As we went through the door, we learned that there was a lot more to the museum than we first thought.

The different areas of the museum contained different dummies. Some of the areas are Royalty Row where they have the wax dummies of England Royalty past and present, Great Leaders, where they have famous leaders of the world like Mahatma Gandhi, The Galaxy of Stars, where they have famous celebrities like Elvis Presley, Storybook land, where they have dummies of a few favorite fairy tales, and The Chamber of Horrors, where they show in detail the methods used for torture and imprisonment throughout history.

Our favorite was definitely the Chamber of Horrors. We liked it more for the history lesson than for the dummies. They had scenes displayed and a short explanation of what was displayed. Some of the displays were the Pit and the Pendulum. This is a torture device where the prisoner is laid on his back and tied down inside a pit. A sharp blade is then swung back and forth like a pendulum to cut the prisoner. As the blade cuts through the prisoner it gets lower and lower until the person is cut in half.

The other amazing torture display was The Hook. This was a large sharp metal Hook that was struck through the prisoner. He would be left there suspended in air until he bled to death. It would take several hours to die in this manner. As you read this you are probably shocked that humans can be so cruel to one another. But when you see the display, it almost makes you sick. The wax dummies are not exactly life like, but pretty close. And the displays are very gruesome.

As you leave the dungeon of the Chamber of Horrors, you enter Storybook Land, with dummies of Walt Disney and Alice in Wonderland. What a change. From horror to fairly tales. The display of the Last Supper was great as well. That was my second favorite display after the Chamber of Horrors.

While we were not impressed by the wax figures in the wax museum, we did enjoy it.

And as you leave the museum you end up in the gift/candy shop. And this shop has several British candy favorites. There were a lot of great treats here that are not available elsewhere. You owe it to yourself to check it out.