Madame Tussauds - Attraction Design

One of our second year projects was a direct collaboration with Madame Tussauds London which is part of the Merlin Entertainments group. After a tour of the attraction we were set a brief by the Creative director for the Tussauds brand. It was to create a high tech attraction for within the London branch which would incorporate modern or futuristic technology to enhance the visitor experience. It was supposed to be very much 'Blue Sky Thinking'. 

On my tour of Tussauds London the music section which showcased the wax figures of past and present pops tars was the section which least impressed me and seemed to offer the most potential for improvement. The main concept I decided on was to look at concert design, I wanted to create a concert 'stage' within Tussauds which would showcase the wax figures but then also incorporate multimedia technologies to create more of a performance for the audience. 

These images below show my final design. Small groups of visitors would enter a separate space in which there would be a mini concert stage. On the stage there would be 5 'pods' containing the wax figures of 5 different popular pop stars. The pods were inspired by the pod structures I found so commonly used by performers on stage in many huge international arena tours. 

The room would fall into darkness, on a timed loop one at a time each pod would light up out of the darkness, there would be a two minute montage of their most famous tracks and alongside this soundtrack projected images and video clips of that performer would cover the rest of the stage. This sequence would follow for each performer out of the five. At the end of the sequence the lights would come up, all five pods would be lowered to stage level and the audience would be welcomed on stage to climb into the pods and pose for photos with the wax figures of their favorite performers. 

I then designed an individual interactive experience. Continuing the pod idea I looked into projection and hologram technology. Individual cylindrical glass pods would be situated around the exit of the concert stage space. The pods would be made of tinted glass allowing visitors on the outside to look into the pods but meaning the visitor 'performing' inside cannot see people watching them encouraging them to be less reserved and to let go of their inhibitions. 

Inside the pod, the visitor can select which of the 5 performers they would like to perform with and which particular song. Then projection technology would project an admiring audience around the pod apart from a small space directly in front of the visitor onto which the lyrics would be shown in a traditionally karaoke style. There would be a glass plate in the centre of the pod onto which would be a 3D projection of the pop star perfoming their chosen track and the visitor could then enjoy performing alongside their favorite singer. After leaving the pod they would then be able to purchase the DVD of their performance. The performance pods serve as a way of not only creating more visitor interaction but also producing extra revenue for the business.