Footfall at Mother's Wax Museum crosses 8 lakh, 3D selfies a hit trend

Kolkata: Eight lakh people have visited Mother's Wax Museum since its inception in November 2014. With a member of a family from Meghalaya, who visited the museum on Monday, the number of visitors exceeded 8 lakh.

Named after Mother Teresa, the museum was inaugurated by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from the dais of Kolkata International Film Festival on November 10, 2014.

The souvenir shop in particular is very popular from where people can buy exclusive souvenir and memories. Various types of

t-shirts and caps are also sold in the shop.

The museum is divided into several sections, which include wax statues of famous people from the world of entertainment, noted scientists, novelists, personalities and cricketers.

"The sports section is the most popular, where one can get to see the statues of great cricket personalities such as Kapil Dev, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly and present Indian skipper Virat Kohli," an official from the West Bengal Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO) said.

The fantasy section, which includes statues of Chota Bheem, Doraemon and Spider Man, has become very popular among the children.

Selfies with the wax figurines at the museum has been a trend among the visitors.

A visitor also can get his/her own 3D selfie at the museum. HIDCO has recently introduced this cutting-edge technology through which a person's face/head is scanned 360 degrees and a golf ball sized (slightly smaller) 3D sculpture is printed by a 3D printer. The finished sculpture is couriered in 48 hours, of course at a cost.

The finished sculpture comes at a price of Rs 2,000 (including courier charges).

The process is done adjacent to the souvenir counter at the museum and a person only has to sit in a chair for the 3D selfie.

The use of technology for 3D selfies is emerging as a fun element and the response from the visitors have been quite good. HIDCO chairman Debashis Sen said. An agency had approached HIDCO with this concept and it has been accepted.