Destination: Tourist Town and Palookaville
Like any city that receives over 100 cruise ship visits each summer, Victoria is filled with expensive, tacky attractions. As a kid, when we'd go on family vacations I always wanted to stop at every tourist trap that had a big billboard declaring that I would "Be Amazed!" However, my dad always held firm and our station wagon seldom left the Interstate. I believe, though, that the denial of visits to these palookavilles during my formative years left me as an adult scorning such places, while, at the same time, longing to visit them.
Thus, when Attractions Victoria organized a “Be A Tourist in Your Hometown Week” I was ready to be amazed at what Victoria had to offer. During this annual event, a $9 ticket gets locals free or heavily discounted admission to many of Victoria’s tourist places.
Jen and I spent the last few days doing field research at some of the more dubious sights of Victoria. The ultimate conclusion of our research is that for the most part, my old man was probably right. Based on the attractions that Jen and I visited, the organizers could rename the promotion “Visit Tacky Places You Would Never Actually Pay Full Price to Visit Week.” Here then is my field report on some of the places Jen and I checked out. I’m also including my unsolicited suggestions and unwanted advice on how to improve such attractions to make locals actually want to pay to visit them again and again.
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Miniature World – The whole concept behind this place can be summed up with the phrase “dioramas are cool.” If you’re into dioramas (and who isn't) this should be your first stop. It’s filled with tiny models of big places, historical times, and fictional scenes. Visitors walk through a maze of glass cases displaying extreme or professional versions of your childhood dollhouse or that model train set your friend’s dad built in his basement. Some of these are actually kind of neat and you can see the artistry that goes into, say, building a diorama of the complete run of the 4,000 mile long Trans Canada Railroad. All in all, I found myself kind of liking this place. All of the displays, though, look like they were a lot more fun to build than they are to see. Which leads to my thoughts on how to improve the place.
Suggestions for Improvement: Make it interactive; take away the glass cases and let kids and tourists actually play with and build some of the sets. Sure, a lot of it might be broken, stolen or ruined, but imagine an “open source” miniature world in which people could drop by and build the world in their heads. The resulting cities, bridges, and railroads imagined, created, and connected by thousands of different people would really be something to see. Or, you could follow with my other suggestion: Go the other way: Giganta-World! Instead of that 1/256th model of the London Bridge, make a London Bridge that is actually 256 times larger than the original. Instead of people who are an inch tall, make giants that are a 100 feet tall. Now that would really be amazing.
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Gray Line Tours – The double decker buses of Gray Line Tours are a familiar sight in most large cities in North America. Our bus driver/tour guide was full of personality, bad jokes, and random facts while being a little light on actual history. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the tour, but then again, the top section was full and I had to sit down below. We got a good overview of Victoria’s more interesting areas and heard a lot of bad jokes and puns. In fact, I think there was about a 1:1 ratio of jokes to history lessons.
For example of a bad local joke, try this one: Canadian money seems to be a little strange. Take the toonie, it’s a queen with a bear behind.
Suggestions: Everyone wants to sit in the upper deck, so how about triple decker buses? Taking a Gray Line tour of Victoria is fine if you don’t know the city at all and have limited time to spend here. In fact, I suspect their target audience are cruise ship passengers who are only in town for an afternoon. If you’d like to learn some history or real facts about the city, I would suggest one of the excellent walking tours offered around town.
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The Pacific Undersea Gardens – This aquarium themed tourist trap floats in Victoria’s Inner Harbour and is undoubtedly one of the uglier structures in town. I’ve never been able to figure out why the city lets this eyesore float in front such beautiful buildings as the Empress Hotel or the Parliament Buildings. The politicians were probably paid off with . . . sand dollars (Uh, sorry about that – stupid Gray Line tour). After paying at the entrance, visitors descend underneath the water via a metallic, trippy staircase and enter a dimly lit hall that looks like the back section of an aquarium. Only, unlike a real aquarium with nice large viewing windows, all the windows here tiny – perhaps a little larger than an airplane window. The view is of murky water filled with local fishes and marine life. The hall leads past a touching pond (if there is such a thing as hell, it can’t be worse than coming back as a starfish in a touch tank) to a small theater. The slanted benches in the theater face another row of these tiny windows where visitors are treated to a 15 minute live scuba show. The show consists of a diver who basically harasses various marine animals in order to get them to swim in front of the windows.
As a diver myself, I hate to think that one of the lessons of this place is that harassing wildlife is fun. Other science and biology lessons at this place are pretty minimal. After the theater, visitors are funneled back up to the surface where they find themselves in a gift shop that is about the same size as the entire underwater exhibit.
Suggestions: Of all the places Jen and I explored, this was the worst of the bunch. My first suggestion would be for the city of Victoria to build an actual aquarium that includes you know, some actual science or learning or something. Barring that, I would say, chop off the above water gift shop level – if the whole place was completely underwater, then the Undersea Gardens wouldn’t be such an eyesore in Inner Harbour. And hey, since the thing is in the Inner Harbour anyway, how about a underwater window that looks out into the Harbour and allows locals to see what the bottom looks like? Finally, make the viewing windows bigger, include some science, and, please, stop poking that octopus.
For a good look at how to do a great small aquarium in a tiny space, check out the Hatfield Marine Science Center the next time you’re in Newport, Oregon (Warning: there’s another Undersea Gardens floating in their own harbor, apparently it’s a chain business).
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Royal London Wax Museum – This wax museum is similar to any wax museum in the world, if not a little smaller. It has royalty, celebrities, and a chamber of horrors. Nobody looks too real – most of the statues look like they were actually modelled after celebrity impersonators – yeah, I guess that sort of looks like Elvis – rather than of the real thing. My favorite part of experience happened when I exited the chamber of horrors and found myself in a Disney themed hallway. The seven dwarves had crazy, lunatic eyes and Alice in Wonderland appeared to be slightly insane. It was much more frightening than anything in the preceding PG-rated chamber of horrors. I'm sure this was intentional. That's their rating, by the way, not mine.
Suggestions: I think it would be a lot more fun if they would hire the occasional real person to stand among the dummies. I don’t mean actors - finding the real George Bush or Bill Clinton standing in the hall of presidents would be pretty interesting if not a little scary, but then I suppose ticket prices would be higher.
Actually, my main suggestion would be to move this museum somewhere else. Currently, it’s housed in the grand CPR Steamship Terminal (pictured here) which was designed by Francis Rattenbury, the architect of the nearby Parliament Building and Empress Hotel. I suggest moving the wax museum out and using the building as a terminal for the Coho Ferry, which currently docks next door.
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Finally, here are a few very nice places, which don’t quite fit the description of tourist trap, that we also explored:
The Abkhazi Gardens are a very nice and very small garden tucked away in a nearby neighborhood. If you’re into gardens, you'll enjoy this one, although the normal $10 cover charge seems steep for its size. The patio of their teahouse looks like it would be a great place to hang out on a warm summer evening.
The Royal BC Museum is an excellent anthropology and natural history museum. If you’re only going to pay to visit one thing in Victoria, this should be it.
Fort Rodd Hill – This large historic fort and park has a beach, a large lawn, great views, the oldest lighthouse on the west coast of Canada, and many, many concrete gun batteries, guard houses, and command posts. On weekends, volunteers dress up in historic period-piece uniforms and make its military history live again.
Vancouver Island Brewery - See my new review on the Gulch Guides section of this website.
Market Square Walking Tour – Market Square is a great place to hang out and this walking tour offered the right amount of solid history and story telling.
