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The Queue Itself Becomes The Tourist Attraction
The Queen of the Tourist Queues in London used
to be Madame Tussauds (walk up tickets on the day
are now a whopping £30) and though the waxworks
are still incredibly popular with overseas visitors the
big queues nowadays are for The London Dungeon.
The queue is a horrible, shuffling, muddle of misery,
sometimes six deep in all weathers that blocks the
pavements on Tooley Street and Duke Street Hill by
London Bridge Station. But not for much longer for
the London Dungeon is moving out of the dripping
tunnels beneath the station where it has been since it
was set up in 1974 by an enterprising mum who
noticed that her young sons were only interested in
history if it was the macabre and gory bits. The
attraction is reopening in the vaults beneath County
Hall where the new exhibits will include the truly
horrible and blood-curdling sight of Red Ken
Livingstone dressed as Oliver Twist keening and
wailing as Mrs. Thatcher dressed as Britannia-cum-
Boadicea thrashes him with a trident. Well not really
because whether it’s to your taste or not they do
take historical accuracy very seriously in that most
unserious and lucrative of tourist attractions.
No Queues Yet
And of London’s newest attractions? Well at the
new Emirates Airline, also known as the Thames
Cable Car there’s seldom a queue beyond weekends
and school holidays. Built to carry 2500 people an
hour it’s barely managing to attract 250. Do come
before the rest of the world catch on about just how
much fun this novelty is. Being whisked across the
broad and silvery Thames in a shiny glass gondolas
is terrific fun. From February you can whizz up to
the viewing gallery at the top of The Shard over at
London Bridge but if they were thinking what lucky
synchronicity that the London Dungeon queues
should vacate the pavements just in time for the
hoards coming to see how much London resembles an
electrical circuit board from 1000 feet up they might be
a tad disappointed. At £24.95 a ticket it isn’t a sell-out.
We aren’t offering visits by the way. We offer a full
day out with a top notch Blue Badge guide, morning
coffee & biscuits and a main course lunch for £19.95
per person so we just haven’t got the heart to take all
that money to look out of the Emir of Qatar’s window.
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Finally I’ll just share with you one story that neatly
sums up the British and the queue. I’d arrived on the
pier down at The O
2
the other Sunday with 150 group
members from Cambridgeshire and West Sussex to
board the London Rose as dusk fell for a sailing on our
annual Cruising into Christmas event. Our boat, all
newly refurbished and rather spruce, was there, crew
ready and waiting bang on time for our departure but
in our way was a very small but noisy American man
attended by a cohort of black clad bigger-than-he men
clutching walkie talkies and he was, Captain America,
quite without any authority, corralling our folk and
preventing us boarding our boat. It turned out he was
waiting for The Rolling Stones to arrive by luxury
executive launch to play their 50-year reunion gig at
The O
2
Arena. But
WE WERE THERE FIRST
.
And besides it was only 4.00pm - the Stones weren’t
due on until gone 9.00pm. So down came the barriers
and 150 beautifully behaved senior citizens, in an
organically neat and orderly line walked gently past an
increasingly irate American man to board our boat
while another smaller group of senior citizens waited
out in the stream on their luxury rock star launch
before they could come ashore, put on their glad rags
and plug their guitars in ready to wow the crowds.
Captain America learned that
you can’t always get
what you want
but I’m sure Mick and the boys didn’t
mind waiting their turn. They are British after all.