When I first visited Madame Tussaud’s a few years ago, I must admit that I approached with a tiny bit of trepidation. If you've seen 1953's "House of Wax" with Vincent Price you'll know what I'm talking about. These places always kind of creep me out. I walked away after that visit a little creeped out but mostly wondering why anyone would pay what I considered to be an outrageous entrance fee to see wax dummies standing around.

But over the last few years, the Vegas Tussaud’s has been, well, Vegas-a-fied adding more spectacle and show to proceedings that I think make it a much more enjoyable experience overall.

For the uninitiated, Madame Tussaud is a real person, having risen to fame for her lifelike wax figures during the French revolution. You see she was forced to prove her allegiance to France by creating death masks for executed French nobles. Charming and not at all creepy, right?

For the last 200 or so years, the wax figures have moved from royalty to celebrity, with museums in London, Amsterdam, New York, Hong Kong, and this one in Las Vegas.

The 30,000 square-foot facility is divided up into several themed-rooms with celebrities from all walks of life featured throughout. Although the exact people immortalized rotate periodically, figure upon seeing celebrities from movies, television, music, sports, and even politics. Generally speaking these exhibits are pretty lifeless despite the lifelike quality of everyone from Brad Pitt to Barbra Streisand.

It’s the interactive exhibits that really make the cover charge more palatable. You can slip on a wedding dress and get married to George Clooney. You can race cars with NASCAR legends, including a cool game that reacts to your body’s shadow. There’s a place for you to pose next to Elvis, of course (it’s some sort of law in this town I think). And there’s even a haunted house section where real live people jump out and yell “boo” at you. These exhibits also change periodically but it gives you an idea of what you can expect.

There are also educational areas where visitors learn the history of Madame Tussaud and see the process by which they make the wax figures. There's even a wax figure of a guy carving a wax figure. Heebie jeebie.

Some of the figures are so good that you want to touch them - which you can. They encourage you to poke and prod and take pictures along the way. I admit to very hesitantly touching a few of the figures because I was sure they were going to leap up and strangle me and encase me in wax so I could be displayed… sorry… got carried away there.

However, there are a lot of the figures that look no better than brightly colored department store mannequins. Oddly, they seem to do better with the male celebs than the female. Not sure why that is.

You can take as long as you want to tour the facility but even with the newer interactive exhibits and some excessive lingering I had a hard time wasting 45 minutes. At $22.50 per person for adults that's a pretty expensive 45 minutes, although I figured it worked out to about 13 cents per fake celebrity so if you look at it that way it isn't too bad. The place is much more entertaining than it used to be so that $22.50 now just falls into the expensive category for me instead of outrageous.

And it's really not that creepy. Although I will say that it's a good thing they didn't have a figure of Vincent Price or they would've had to peel me off the ceiling.