Mama Mia: ABBA Museum in Stockholm
In June 2009 Stockholm’s new world attraction opens!
Now the construction of Stockholm’s new tourist magnet, ABBA the Museum, starts in Stora Tullhuset at Stadsgården. 6,500 square metres on four levels, featuring everything about one of our biggest Swedish icons – ABBA.
On 3 – 7 June 2009 the attraction opens with a week of festivities in Stockholm and today, 5 December, the first Opening Packages go on sale.
One year ago the plans for a museum about ABBA in Stockholm were launched. Now the construction starts and on 3 – 7 June 2009 ABBA the Museum, the only of its kind in the world, opens.
– This will be a museum on an international level. Plenty of multimedia and interactivity, and we will tell the story in an entertaining way, with the visitors themselves as part of the attraction. We have succeeded if our guests both sing, dance, laugh and cry and, upon leaving, want to go back in again, says Ulf Westman, one of the two founders of ABBA the Museum.
The opening will take the shape of a glittering ”ABBA the Museum Opening Week” 3 – 7 June 2009, with a festival area from Stadsgården to Kungsträdgården featuring tents at the quays, and stages on land and on water.
– The number of people that may enter the museum at one time is limited, for natural reasons. In this way we will be able to offer many people a wonderful opening week and unite the entire tourist business around one single theme. Everyone in Stockholm will feel a part of this, and the city shall resound with our Swedish “national music”, says Ewa Wigenheim-Westman, also a founder of ABBA the Museum.
It has already been noticed all over the world that an ABBA museum will open in Stockholm, and enquiries about the opening date are flooding in.
– In Australia, for example, the group is still hot and many want their place guaranteed and plan their trip here. That’s why a limited number of Opening Packages for Opening Week are released as early as today, on December 5, at 1 pm (CET), says Ewa Wigenheim-Westman.
So what will ABBA the Museum be like?
Ewa and ulf are the producers in every step of creating the attraction.
The visitors will follow a linear story from the early years when Björn, Benny, Agnetha and Anni-Frid had separate careers, until they took a break in 1983. The visitors will enter at one place, enjoy the attraction, then reach a separate exit.
We will recreate the Brighton stage, the helicopter from Arrival, the disco aura from Voulez-Vous, the Mamma Mia! success story, and much more. We will illustrate career ups and downs, capture the feeling of ABBA’s world tours, and you will experience what it really was like in the recording studio. The visitors will be a part of the audience, get backstage access, sing like Agnetha and Anne-Frid, dance like John Travolta, and even experience what it was like to be one of ABBA. You get to meet musicians, record a video, sing the ABBA songs, meet the people around the group and, naturally, ABBA themselves in many different ways. How? Well, of course we can’t reveal everything right now.
– “Concert” or “film” is our dynamic concept as we’re creating the attraction. We have an intro, we mix uptempo with ballads, we finish with a finale, and if there is enough applause there might be an encore, says Ewa Wigenheim-Westman.
The entrance will be on the short side of Stora Tullhuset facing Slussen. Apart from the attraction there will be an event space encompassing 600 square metres for external and internal events. The temporary space is also available for different events. Naturally, the world’s largest ABBA store will open here as well.