A Clifton Hill wax museum has begun offering 84-month financing on admission, allowing visiting families to spread the cost of a 35-minute walkthrough over seven years.

The Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks announced the program Tuesday, one week after Labour Day, describing it as a response to what general manager Darryl Kostiuk called “changing affordability expectations among the Hill’s core demographic.”

“Families are telling us they want the full Clifton Hill experience, but they don’t necessarily want to pay for it this decade,” Kostiuk said. “We heard that.”

Under the program, a family of four can finance $99.96 in admission, plus an $89 documentation fee that Kostiuk described as standard, at 9.99 per cent on approved credit. That works out to bi-weekly payments of $1.45, or $263.44 over the full term.

“That’s less than a toonie every two weeks,” Kostiuk said. “People spend more than that on fudge.”

A new office by the gift shop

To administer the program, the museum converted a storage room between the Hall of Horror and the gift shop into a finance office. It is staffed by Kevin Doan, who spent eleven years in the finance department of a car dealership in Grimsby before joining the museum in August.

Visitors now exit the final exhibit, a wax Charles Blondin crossing the Niagara Gorge on a tightrope, directly into Doan’s office, where they are offered a coffee and asked what kind of monthly payment they are comfortable with.

Doan said most families opt for at least one of the museum’s protection products, which raise the bi-weekly payment to $1.90. They include:

  • Gap coverage, which pays the difference between the outstanding balance and what the visit was actually worth
  • An extended warranty on the funhouse mirrors, covering any distortion beyond factory specifications
  • Memory undercoating, which Doan said protects the visit from being brought up negatively by children later in life

“I don’t pressure anybody,” Doan said. “I just ask them to picture their kids at fourteen, standing in front of the same Blondin, and ask what that’s worth to them.”

Rob and Tanya Pellerin, visiting from Brantford with their children, ages six and nine, signed on Wednesday afternoon. Their final payment is scheduled for September 2033.

“By then our oldest will be at Brock,” Rob Pellerin said. “It’ll be nice to know the wax museum is fully ours.”

The Pellerins also rolled $212 remaining on a credit card from last summer’s trip to the Hill into the new agreement, which Doan said is increasingly common.

“A lot of families arrive on Clifton Hill already upside down from their last visit,” he said. “We help them get out from under that.”

Linda Marchetti, a St. Catharines credit counsellor, said she has seen a steady rise in attraction-related debt among her clients.

“I had a woman last month carrying three separate mini-golf balances,” Marchetti said. “None of them were for the same course.”

She added that seven years was a long time to be paying off a wax figure of someone the children had never heard of.

Competition on the Hill

Other attractions responded within a day. A neighbouring haunted house began advertising 96-month terms with no payments until spring, and at least one mini-golf course introduced a 48-month lease, under which families make lower payments but return the round at the end of the term, with charges for excess strokes.

Kostiuk said the museum welcomes the competition and is already exploring financing for other parts of the visit, including the photo package and the souvenir wax hand.

Asked whether the program could be extended to cover parking in the lot across the street, he said that would require a mortgage broker.