It immortalizes your favorite stars, all right. If you want to see the Hollywood heavyweights all dressed up in costume and completely unable to run away, visit the Hollywood Wax Museum (6767 Hollywood Blvd., 323/462-8860, www.hollywoodwax.com, daily 10 a.m.–midnight, adults $16, children $7). You can’t miss it, since the brilliant sign lights up a good chunk of Hollywood Boulevard, especially at night. Inside, you’ll see everyone from Lucille Ball to Captain Jack Sparrow.

The shtick of this wax museum is, of course, movies. The exhibits are re-creations of sets of all sorts of films, and as you pass through you’ll be right in the action (if staring at eerie, life-sized wax likenesses of real people can be called action). You can even get a glimpse of stars on the red carpet at an awards show-style set.

The Hollywood Wax Museum first opened to amazed crowds in 1966. To this day, it remains inexplicably popular with tourists and locals alike.

If you need yet another cotton-candy museum experience, right across the street you can visit the Guinness World of Records Museum (6764 Hollywood Blvd., 323/463-6433). Here you’ll find exhibits describing the records related in the book of the same name.