Ridiculous Tourist Attractions

Abba The Museum.

Stockholm.

9/11 Museum

The Amityville House. I was even in Pa once talking to someone and I said was from Long Island ( didn't say where) and the guy said "Oh I was just there last week. My girlfriend and I went to see The Amityville Horror House.

Here ya go.

Isn't there a corn-hole palace in Iowa?

Lots of things with TV and movie connections, especially for shows and movies from the distant past. Examples: The Rocky statue, Philadelphia. The Bull and Finch Bar (inspiration for "Cheers"), Boston. The Ponderosa Ranch, Nevada.

The Salt Museum in Northwich, England. 'Explore the history and science of salt production in Cheshire' !

Thanks, r4. That's a great site. And everyone else's posts are pretty damn funny, too -- even the 9/11 Museum mention (I've been there and it was oddly Disneyesque).

I used to see commercials for Gaslight Village when I was a kid. Never went, but it always made me think of poor Ingrid Bergman in that movie.

Only a gay kid would think of poor Ingrid. I'm right there with you, r9

Trump Tower, but lately, it's the one on his neck that makes people gawk.

The Al Capone grave. Many of my relatives are buried in the cemetery across the street and One time I decided to find it. I felt like a dork getting out of the car and snapping a pic, but shortly after I did, another group pulled up and did the same thing.. It mostly Italian Catholics And there are actually a lot of gangsters buried there, so it's quite interesting.

I've heard they since moved it, but I used to live near the scary house from the Halloween movie. I always had to drive visitors past it at night.

It's a real tourist attraction, but Plymouth Rock is the most underwhelming piece of roadside kitsch I ever stopped at.

It's nothing but a tiny little rock with "1620" carved into it, and even assuming it's real (and that's in question), there's nothing to see except all your fellow tourists arriving, peering down into the pit, saying "WTF?" to themselves and leaving--all in about 15 seconds.

r12, I used to live in Oak Park and would walk past (long-dead )Sam Giancana's house en route to Gina's Italian Ice. More often than not there would be tourists snapping pix outside of Giancana's home. The "Mob" is a big draw in Chicago. A friend lives on the block of the Blagojevich home and told me tourists flock there, too.

R15. I grew up on that block--used to trick or treating there.

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. It's just a bridge! I drive across it everyday to go to work.

Actually.... nobody asks.

But I drive them past it anyway

I once went to a seminar in Georgetown, and the people that ran the event told us where we could go after dinner to see those Exorcist steps.

Carrie's townhouse on "Sex and the City" on Perry Street! You should see the frau hordes coming by to photograph it!

Nicole Simpson's townhouse. People STILL drive past even though it's been redesigned, the number's been changed and you can't see anything. Rockingham no longer has guards but people aren't that interested in it. Thankfully, Mezzaluna closed so "fans" can reproduce Nicole's last dinner.

The Longaberger headquarters building.

Plymouth Rock - it's a stupid rock that people spit on, throw chewing gum on, and spray graffiti on. You stand there with a bunch of other tourists and all of you are thinking, "Why the hell did I come here?"

The Mary Tyler Moore statue in downtown Minneapolis. Every gay man I've ever known from out of town wants to see it.

MTM statue:

The Corn Palace is in Mitchell, SD.

It's where I'll be buried.

I want to see the Mary Tyler Moore statue in Minneapolis.

Your bombarded with the Stuckey's Pecan Log for miles.It's fun if your a kid though.

The Bakelite Museum. It's exactly as described here

Whenever I'm in England, I never miss an opportunity to visit the Pencil Museum. It is the birthplace of the world's FIRST PENCIL and should be on everyone's bucket list.

Niagara Falls---natural beauty surrounded by absolute crap.

r30, how else could we possibly do tribute to the wondrous household implement that made it possible for us to dial phones without breaking our nails?

I will add another vote for Plymouth Rock. What an underwhelming disappointment.

The Pencil Museum also has the WORLDS LARGEST PENCIL, too!

Blarney Stone

Anne of Green Gables house in PEI

Crazy Horse, it'll never get finished btw

Plymouth Rock is not much worse than that "Southernmost Point" monument in Key West. Or the Four Corners in AZ/UT/NM/CO.

After having finished your epic tour of the PENCIL MUSEUM, wander over 3,000 miles to Japan and see the ERASURE MUSEUM for all of you malcontents who HAVE to be different.

Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, which has no attraction other than being a tourist attraction.

It started out as a harbor like any other, and tourists came for some reason, so they started adding wax museums and restaurants and aquariums and all sorts of tourist crap. It's so meta.

Here's one the lezzies may want to see.

The inspirational World's Largest Ball of String.

This is the 2nd one. The first one actually burned down when a tourist accidentally threw away his lighted cigarette on it. The town almost went out of business.

Mount Rushmore seems to deeply disappoint the punters. It's about a million miles from the visitor center to the actual carvings, the view you get from the visitor center is not as good as any 25 cent postcard you've ever seen, and tourists seem surprised to discover that they can't climb around on it like Cary Grant in North by Northwest.

The Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas.

Wall Drug, SD.

South Dakota, is home to so many ridiculous and totally disappointing tourist attractions.

The Diner from Seinfeld. I was I an airport shuttle bus and we stopped near the diner to pick someone up and these guys from Sweden on the bus with me went ape shit. I told them we probably had enough time if they wanted to get a picture. They jumped off and got photos. I thought it was hilarious.

Wall Drug is the worst. South Dakota has a lot of natural beauty though. I have been twice and loved the scenery. Mt. Rushmore was alright, I didn't mind the walk to the sight. The best of South Dakota is off the beaten path though!

World's Fairs and Expos are filled with ridiculous tourist attractions.

Dubai is a ridiculous tourist attraction.

The New York Wheel on Staten Island is going to SUCK BIG TIME and piss people off while ripping them off.

A ticket to the main observation deck of the Empire State Building is over 30 bucks and includes waiting. THAT IS RIDICULOUS!!!!!

The beach

R39 Before I clicked on the link I noticed the .CA website domain and immediately thought -- Anne Murray's Birthplace!

The Hollywood Sign (especially since it's cordoned off so you can't climb on the letters anymore) and the Hollywood Walk of Fame (it's just a sidewalk with plaques of stars).

.

Plymouth Rock is a disappointment, however, nearby Plimoth Plantation is excellent.

The Alamo is in the middle of San Antonio and is much smaller than I thought it would be, and also has some kitschy crap across the street like the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum.

Coit Tower in San Francisco is nothing when you get there. Though I love the city otherwise, and love the tower as a viewpoint.

Anywhere in Houston. There's no historical landmark, and when you ask someone where to go, you know you're in trouble anywhere when someone replies "Well, you could go to the Galleria."

South of the Border, not only tedious but downright nightmarish at 11pm.

Las Vegas.

Has anyone went to The Thing in Arizona? I drove past there many yars ago, saw about a dozen billboards for it, but didn't stop. I figured it'd be dumb and a waste of time, but i kind of regret not stopping in. What was the Thing? I kind of pictured a chubacabra in a jar...

[quote]Has anyone went

Oh, DEAR!

Apparently, The Thing is a fake mummy that was used in sideshows. I've never been, but I'm bored and I had to google it.

I spent a weekend in Astoria, Oregon and rode the little $1 tram where they pointed out where The Goonies and Kindergarten Cop were filmed. Very cute little coastal town and it is quite adorable how proud the locals are about those films.

In Boston, the Cheers Bar at the Hampshire House. Like you will see Sam, Diane, Norm and the gang.

Or in Key West, Sloppy Joe's Bar, which is not the original Sloppy's that Hemingway frequented.

I find it very interesting that so many people give a shit.

I love these places and have been to the majority of the ones listed above! BTW, very near the Cadillac Ranch is "The Largest Cross in North America" in case you're going!

My partner dragged me to The Goonies house (R55) and I also loved Astoria and that entire area. The Columbia River Gorge is beautiful.

Nearby Portland has my nominee for a truly ridiculous tourist attraction- the "smallest park in the world" . OY

The National Mustard Museum in Middleton, Wisconsin. Stopped there while on a road trip with bf. We were both in a silly mood.

r50, Houston has some local attractions, the Orange Show and the Beer Can House. You can tour NASA, but I'm told it's underwhelming.

The giant pair of knitting needles near Paris Ontario to commemorate the Mary Maxim factory there.

I was in Arizona in May, and yes, the ads for "The Thing" are still there.

I didn't stop, either.

I love Portland and their slogan, "Keep Portland Weird." Back in the 80's and 90's there used to be a Church of Elvis down around where Voodoo Donuts is now, wish it had not disappeared. It had odd animatronics hooked up to a computer with a robot synthesizer voice that would dispense handmade little Elvis trinkets or your fortune if you deposited 50 cents, and you could get "married" there.

The Friends building in Greenwich Village. It's just an apartment building that they shot the exterior of to fill in set-up shots for a sitcom. It's not like Monica and Chandler and Joey actually live there.

Several years ago, I heard this woman talking about how she couldn't leave New York City without visiting the Friends House. I thought she was talking about a Quaker church where she could buy homemade quilts and jars of jam.

Jurassic Park

Montreal used to have the Midget Palace. I think it closed in the 90s. My father offered to take me there when I was around five, after a trip to Chateau Ramezay and a few other sights in Old Montreal, it was a ten minute drive away up in the Plateau. I asked how big the midgets were and he said about my size. I was so bewildered at the thought of being mistaken for one of them and forced to stay there I said I'd rather go home.

When I lived in Chicago I couldn't believe how many people hit town convinced that their trip would be a failure if they didn't try Chicago deep dish pizza, usually at Uno's.

Long lines, indifferent service, overpriced, and generally like eating a microwaved block of cheese, I would put up with it just to enjoy their disappointment. No one ever asked to go a second time.

Disney World, Disneyland. I hate that Americana, family, pristine, perfect, fake bullshit. It bores me and annoys me to death.

I'd never heard of this Midgets' Palace place. It apparently closed in 1990 and then operated as a bathhouse for a time. If you do a map search, it looks like it's been torn down and replaced with new construction.

Lombard Street, San Francisco.

Really, people line up and clog the traffic for the privilege of driving down a windy street?

I went to Bedrock City, AZ (just south of the Grand Canyon) a couple weeks ago. They're trying to sell the place, so I figured I had better see it before it's gone. It was built in the early 70s, and I don't think it has ever been renovated since they opened it. I love kitschy crap, so I had a blast. There's a creepy theatre where they run an old Flintstones episode on a loop on a filthy screen, a bunch of buildings like Fred's House, Barney's House, a salon, etc. And barely any visitors (we were there for a couple hours and saw about 3 other people).

Yes r67, they say 961 Rachel est, but I remember it being on the block east of Christophe-Colomb, between Christophe-Colomb and De la Roche, facing Parc Lafontaine, I used to live farther up on Christophe-Colomb, between Mont-Royal and Gilford. I'd pass that area frequently on my way home from the Village. The place I knew as the Midget Palace looked as if it would fit in on any street in the Plateau, like any other duplex or triplex, maybe more stained glass windows and more ornate cornices, but nothing special.

"Coit Tower in San Francisco is nothing when you get there. Though I love the city otherwise, and love the tower as a viewpoint."

I like Coit Tower, or rather Telegraph Hill. The tower itself is nothing but the views are magnificent, there are some lovely paths that lead up and down the hill, and you may see the flock of wild parrots. And if you don't go on a summer weekend, there might even be parking!

Re Plymouth Rock: It used to be much, much bigger. A huge boulder, in fact. But over the centuries, it was chipped away by fortune-seekers as souvenirs/keepsakes, so ti was eventually whittled down to that little lump it is now. That's why it's housed inside that superstructure to keep vandals at bay.

R70, all of the literature puts it on Rachel est. If you find old photos and compare the two buildings beside it, they facades are the same. I also found this intriguing documentary at the link below, which includes a segment on the museum. I feel like Nancy Drew!

R25, where's the statue of the bespectacled old lady in the background who looks at MTM like she's on crack when she throws her hat in the air?

R58 You could take a world tour of mustard museums

R75 again - link didn't work

In France - http://www.fallot.com/en/

In UK - http://www.mustardshopnorwich.co.uk/

House On The Rock: Tiny, trippy house on top of 500 pole barns crammed with rich hoarder shit. The tour is never-ending.

It's a shame the owner was never my cheating boyfriend - breaking all of his shit would be therapeutic.

St. Valentine's Day Massacre site, Chicago. It's an empty lot. The garage was torn down and one wall moved to Canada. Now it's in Las Vegas. It's just a brick wall, people. But Chicago was left with an empty lot, and yet still people come and take photos of it.

R78, I've heard that lot is haunted.

Jackie Onassis' butcher

R80, that would not be ridiculous.

Add two of her consignment shops plus her drycleaner and you'd deliver a kick-ass Klonopin spirit journey.

The dog on the tuckerbox, five miles from Gundagai (NSW, Australia).

Holsten's Brookdale Confectionery in Bloomfield, NJ (where the last scene from The Sopranos was shot.)

Whenever I'm in LA and have a little time to kill, I go by the former May Company on Crenshaw (now, unfortunately a Macy's). Bette Davis filmed THE STAR on location there, and in the movie's best scene, Bette, a former movie star-turned-shopgirl tells off a couple of haughty matrons, then stomps down the escalator and out the door. I always get a kick out of stomping down that same escalator, just like Bette. Funny, nobody else seems to share my passion.

Times Square.

WTF are you people going there to look at?

The "Exorcist Stairs" are actually legitimately scary. They're very steep and there's just a creepy feeling you get walking up or down them. My friends and I took a series of photographs of us "falling" down them many years ago. Out of the entire roll of film, each of those photos came out completely black.

At the top of the stairs, you can also find The Tombs below 1789 restaurant. The Tombs, of course, was the inspiration for "St. Elmo's Fire."

[quote]My friends and I took a series of photographs of us "falling" down them many years ago. Out of the entire roll of film, each of those photos came out completely black.

Or the Fotomat was fucking with you guys.

...or they forgot to take off the lens cap before photographing the stairs.

The city of Toronto.

"The Hollywood Sign (especially since it's cordoned off so you can't climb on the letters anymore) "

Oh, damn

One that I love is the Carmen Miranda Museum in Rio de Janeiro.

The idiotic Cheers bar in Boston.

People line up & pay stupid amounts of money to go in , only to find that it doesn't look remotely like the bar on the TV show. Because it wasn't filmed there.

Niagara Falls. Most boring vacation ever.

How long can you look at waterfalls? And there is nothing else to do.

Yeah a couple of centuries ago it must have been something but so much erosion has happened that it is now more impressive in the collective imagination.

The drive there is also agony.

R92 I've seen people take selfies/group photos in front of the stairs/Cheers sign, because that was used as the establishing shot for the series. But I've never seen people line up to go inside the actual place.

Branson,Mo

The Civil War battlefields in Virginia. Drove past them a million times when growing up there. It's just a fucking field..

I can't believe that there are 3 people on this thread with a connection to the Blago block in Chicago:

[R14], [R15], and me. I know someone who lives on that block.

What I love about Plymouth Rock is that its not even the rock the Mayflower landed on. They kept getting requests in Plymouth from tourists who wanted to see Plymouth Rock, so they just arbitrarily chose a boulder and carved "1620" on it.

[quote]What I love about Plymouth Rock is that its not even the rock the Mayflower landed on.

Thou liest Mistress Purity. It shall be the stocks for you and may God help your soul.

it was a sad day when the statue of Rocky and Bullwinkle came down.

[quote] it was a sad day when the statue of Rocky and Bullwinkle came down.

It's coming back now.

I lived in Plymouth for several years. I used to watch people from China and India stare at this crappy rock. I wanted to say "Makes that Taj Mahal (or great wall) look pretty lousy, huh?"

Oh, R100 and r101! Dad loading us into the car for pistachio ice cream cones and then driving us by the R&B statue was "Our Perfect Sunday"!

r102, was it interesting to live there? We visited Plymouth several times when I was a kid. More for the beach, although we did do the history (Plimouth Plantation, etc). When I was a kid, I always thought it would be so interesting to live in a historical town.

R103 why pistachio?

[quote]why pistachio?

Eeets goood!

R102: It was Rebublican hell. I was living in a mcmansion with my borderline ex. Also, I was taking care of people named Brewster and Bradford. Yep. The families never left after getting off the boat. Conservative narrow small town with a hillbilly contingent.

[quote]Also, I was taking care of people named Brewster and Bradford. Yep. The families never left after getting off the boat. Conservative narrow small town with a hillbilly contingent.

Inbred hillbilly Mayflower Folk? That deserves its own thread, R107.

Despite efforts to improve it, Hollywwod is still a pretty ridiculous tourist attraction.

"Hollywood". How did autocorrect miss that?

There's a scene in "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" where he's sitting in the mouth of a dinosaur at a dinosaur attraction near Palm Springs, CA. I stopped there and went into the gift shop (inside a dinosaur). I bought a Coke.

R111 the Cabazon Dinosaurs! That has been on my must see list since I saw them in Pee Wee's Big Adventure and The Wizard. I don't care if it's the biggest tourist trap around, I will go there someday. Even if it's just to buy a coke.

As someone said, Dubai. I used to live there. The tourist attractions are interesting for about 10 minutes. Oh by the way, tourists there tend to be rancid and the customer service tends to be worse.

R29 Your link to the Bakelite Museum leads to a really entertaining site!

Fellow oddities enthusiasts and curiosity seekers should check it out. Lots of fun.

DIVERTING JOURNEYS: A Travelogue of Museums, Historic Homes, and Other Curious Destinations

R69 It's nice to know that Bedrock City is still there. I visited it 35 years ago this summer. I rode in Fred's "foot-powered" automobile.

The "Circus Trees" of Gilroy, Ca.

Many years ago, some mad arborist twisted a bunch of saplings into bizarre shapes, and they were a minor attraction up in the mountains where there were no other attractions. Then the strange trees were bought by someone who wanted to make money off of them, and they were moved out of the mountains to Gilroy, another place very lacking in attractions.

They weren't very profitable on their own, so a smallish amusement park has grown up around them. And I'm sure the noisy, hot, crowded amusement park is keeping away the people who are actually interested in strange trees.

Heaven looks like Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo. It may be my favorite place on earth. It's known for it's legendary natural stone urinal, which is gross.

We have an upcoming trip to Clown Motel--a clown-themed inn next to an old graveyard in a windswept, sparesly populated Nevada town. It looks ridiculous, if by "ridiculous" you mean AWESOME.

The other side of the coin is that a friend's brother came to visit from Florida. Even though they tried to talk him out of it, he was determined that one of the things he had to see was the Very Large Array that was featured in some Jodie Foster movie.

So they hauled him out there and then he was upset that it wasn't a tourist attraction. He expected fast food and cheap motels and couldn't believe they weren't there. He said in Florida it would have been set up for tourists.

I went to the Very Large Array a couple years ago when we drove through NM. It was pretty forgettable. Now, Tinkertown...that was the real highlight of my trip. Kitsch heaven.

Faunueil Hall Market in Boston. Navy Pier in Chicago. Both are oversized mall food courts.

R118 that movie was CONTACT (1997). I remember that scene with the array.. It was short, though.

The stall in the Carnegie Hall men's room where Virgil Thomson entertained during all of his premieres.

Anything in Midtown.

I lived in DC for nine years and have no idea where those Exorcist stairs are. Of course I've never seen the movie either. But no one who ever visited me or people that I knew while I lived there ever mentioned them to me. Not even once.

Concrete corn in Ohio.

[quote] I would put up with it just to enjoy their disappointment.

R65, that is absolutely profound! That's one of the best lines I've ever heard. I can't wait for the chance to use it myself.

Tupperware Museum

No trip to Virginia is complete without a visit to the CB Fleet Enema Museum in Lynchburg.

Not sure if it's an official tourist stop, but I was visiting a friend in San Francisco in the mid 90s and we went to the block where the Full House intro was filmed. I pretended to be one of the Olsen twins being chased by Uncle Jessie. That same trip we went to Bodega Bay and saw the school house. I pretended I was being chased by seagulls.

Yes, I know I'm weird. But all these years later I still find it all funny.

R17 - I think the Golden Gate Bridge is absolutely worthy of tourism.

However, Copenhagen's Little Mermaid statue is a joke.

The Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset, England. Besides having some really interesting cave formations, some of which you have to crawl on your stomach to get to, there is an adjacent paper mill, water wheel, dinosaur park, and some circus thing. Wookey Hole isn't as schlocky as it sounds. My two sons, who were quite young when we visited it, are now adults and they both say it was the highlight of our month-long trip to the UK.

Not to be outdone by the Fleet Enema Museum in Virginia, the people of Zheleznovodsk, Russia, have their own magnificent enema monument to delight visitors.

I had an out of town guest who was interested in the American Museum of Natural History solely to see where they filmed Night at the Museum. The actual content? Not so much.

Plymouth Rock. It’s a rock.

The National Museum of Funeral History in Houston.

Actually it's a serious and interesting place to visit, although a bit on the macabre side.

Dick Dock Provincetown MA

Which, by the way, is where the Pilgrims landed originally. NOT on or around Plymouth Rock.

The Regent Beverly Wilshire of Pretty Woman fame now called something else. I cringe when an excited Frau relative or friend immediately wants to head for Rodeo Drive to buy nothing, eat nowhere and see the exterior of a fucking hotel that was not even used for interiors. I also always play busy and will catch up with people later when the wanna go to Hollywood Blvd. In no way do I have any intention of walking shoulder to shoulder with nerdy tourists stopping for a photo with every fucking name on a sidewalk they recognize.

The statue has been updated and the museum is fun for Lucy fans, but couldn’t let this thread pass without mentioning the original scary Lucy monument.

The Popeye Village in Malta.

A shabby monument to a poor film from 40 years ago.

Shelley Duvall has weathered better than the abandoned set ($15pp entry fee)

I hear Plymouth Rock is awesome.