Alison wrote the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum in NYC because of the ridiculously bad time we had there. They wrote us back the following lame excuse: 


Alison,

Thank you for taking the time to write a review of our attraction here on Yelp.  It certainly sounds like we failed to exceed your expectations on your recent visit.  We pride ourselves on providing a unique, interactive and fun experience for visitors of all ages.

As with any item that gets as much use as our interactive elements, there are occasional repairs that need to be made.  Recently we replaced a few exhibits entirely.  While others which are more complex (like the hologram and music interactive) have parts on order that have to be custom produced for our Odditorium.

I'd like to invite you back to have an opportunity to meet you personally and to demonstrate our commitment to our customers and to show you the more than 500 real, authentic items in our collection.  If you'd like to take me up on the offer, call anytime at 212.398.3133.

Warmest regards,

--Steve 

I kindly deigned to reply:


What about the letter was unclear? Why would someone as dissatisfied
as we are want to go all the way back to NYC because some corporate
prick offers up lame excuses for a shitty, overpriced, non-authentic
experience? How do you let a place fall into such disrepair? We are
not talking about a few exhibits. At least half did not work at all.
The ones that did were mostly fakes. Everything in the place that did
work was completely uninteresting and uninspiring to anyone who has
read a book in their life. Around every corner, expecting to see
something new and exciting, I was faced with old-ass little trivia
facts that EVERYONE and their MOTHER knows! EVERYONE! There are some
things that are just not "little-known facts," and your museum had all
of them.  Poor placement and crowded, dingy rooms do not help either.
The only mildly interesting part of my visit was a huge painting that
had to be looked at from the center to view some sort of fancy effect.
It was completely blocked by an exhibit on the ground floor, and even
by a huge, poorly placed fat guy from the balcony view, which MAY have
been tolerable if not for the completely unnecessarily huge hanging
tray of food, as if I do not know what huge, fate people eat. Viewing it from anywhere near the middle was completely impossible.

For starters, people who are paying a large fee to see something
called a museum don't expect to see multiple exhibits that contain
out-dated, and therefore false, facts touted as real truth. My eyes
hurt from all of the rolling after reading about historical figures
and dates and events that are completely wrong.

The list of ridiculous management decisions that obviously resulted in
a nausea-inducingly boring, and at times thoroughly unenjoyable
experience is almost too long to list. Almost. But not too long.

A replica of a dinosaur skeleton? Seriously? You waste space in
your museum of "unbelievable" objects for a fake skeleton of something that no one has been surprised existed for about a hundred
years? I'm glad that I wasted money on the Museum of Natural History
right before coming to your hole. (btw, their dinosaurs were real)

A small TV that plays small waves over and over again? Enough said.

The leg in the fireplace. Why? I am sure the reason is unbelievable
(or not) but there wasn't even a plaque anywhere.

You had two different people listed as the tallest man in the world.

The coal from the titanic? You can buy that at a gift shop. (believe it or not)

I also found your fake mannequin that shows a tattoo when I press a
button to be almost as much fun as when I got my actual tattoo. By the
way, I already knew that people tattoo themselves. It wasn't even a cool tattoo.

Inflatable boobs? Really?

And the haunted library was slightly interesting, except all your
little ghosts were going off at the same time. The doors kept opening
and shutting at the wrong times, which doesn't seem to be
part of the experience, unless me getting permanently sandwiched
between one of them and being added to your ghost collection was also
supposed to be part of the experience.

I also enjoyed attempting to roll my tongue into a camera, only to
find out an hour later after suffering through your crummy displays
that people were watching me on the way out on a television. Thanks for the warning douche bags.

The shrunken heads that you swear are real look exactly like novelty
store shrunken heads. In fact, many of the items that you claim to be
authentic seem suspiciously low quality, and non-antique, especially
considering the surprising number of the same "rare artifacts," that
you seem to have, especially since you have to share with your other
locations.

I also learned at Ripley's Believe It or Not that ancient tribes did
not ever sharpen their weapons, but must have been proficient
blacksmiths, because the "authentic" weapons have a perfect, non-sharp
factory quality dull blade, like when I order a samurai sword from the
internet.

You mentioned "interactive elements." Considering very few of them
work, I am left to guess which of the exhibits that did not seem to be
anything were supposed to be interactive. Thank you for writing to try
to give me lame excuses as to why your exhibits don't work. By the
way, how many things have to break before you order parts? Because, a
LOT of things didn't work. Here's a tip: order things as they break,
and customers may find forgiveness in their generous hearts for the
occasional malfunction.

Much more can be said about the low quality of your crappy
establishment, but I am assuming that somewhere deep inside you must
know what a failure you are and how stupid it is to think that people
want to be bothered with your lousy explanations.

I could go on, but I don't want to take all of the fun out of it for
you, so why don't you take a walk around your little navy made out of
toothpicks (also a glorious addition to your museum. Who knew that
people could glue toothpicks together? Did you know that you can build
little gay sculptures from many different things, like tongue
depressors and even tampons? Because I didn't! Wow!) and try to put
yourself i the boots of someone who is not a moron and wants to see
exhibits about interesting, or true, things.

Sincerely,

guy who paid 60 dollars for him and his girlfriend to go when they
were told it would cost less but you people lie.