TOURISM : A Right Neighborly Gift Graces Entrance to Wild Bill’s Dinner House

When guests arrive for a night of fun at Wild Bill’s Wild West Dinner Extravaganza in Buena Park, the first character they’ll meet will probably remind them more of a competing attraction across the street.

That’s because they will come face-to-face with the waxen likeness of Wild Bill himself, created by the sculptors from Movieland Wax Museum on the opposite side of Beach Boulevard.

The 6-foot-2 statue unveiled Tuesday may be the spitting image of a cowboy showman, but it hardly resembles the actor who portrays him during the dinner theater show. Museum spokesman Mark Edwards says the wax Wild Bill is an amalgam of real and movie gunslingers.

“He has a little bit of Buffalo Bill Cody, Clint Eastwood and even some of Paul Newman and Robert Redford from ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.’ ” Edwards explained. Translation: Picture a middle-age guy who has spent a little too much time in the sun over the years. Add a goatee and longish hair, put a pistol in one hand and a hat in the other. The result is an instant Wild Bill.

The wax figure will greet guests as they arrive for the show, which has been seen by about 400,000 people since opening April 10, 1991. The plaque at the foot of the statue will note that it was a first-anniversary gift from Movieland.

“We think it’s great. They think enough of us after our first year to give us a wax figure,” said Ed Beaver, vice president of Rank Leisure USA, the Orlando-based owner of Wild Bill’s. “It’s a picture opportunity for people, and we try to support (Movieland) too.”

Though the Wild Bill’s show is positioned to attract tourists, nine out of 10 of the guests so far have been Southern California residents looking for dinner and family entertainment.