"Come experience what has disappointed millions of people for over 225 years!" declared Mammoth Cave National Park on social media on Friday.
The witty satirists behind the keyboards at Mammoth Cave National Park unloaded plenty of snark into the post, which pokes fun at a "study" that declared the park the third-most disappointing US tourist attraction.
Listed as second-most disappointing in the same study? Ohio's own Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The distinction of most disappointing location for tourists went to ... the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Not to be as disappointed in their ranking as tourists allegedly are with the park, Mammoth Cave officials instead took to social media to have a little fun.
"While we think the world's longest cave system and over 4,000 years of human history is AMAZING, others find that the cave is 'very dark' and there is 'nothing cool' here to see," reads the post from Mammoth Cave National Park.
The post goes on to encourage anyone hoping to be left unfulfilled to visit the park themselves, where they, too, can be disappointed by a "dry hole with very few stalagmites and stalactites" while they take in the scenery, full of nothing "other than trees."
So what sparked the witty post?
I dug through WCPO's newsroom email account to scope it out some: Every day, media outlets like us are sent dozens upon dozens of emails from organizations advertising "research" they've conducted. Usually these are sent based, in part, on the geographical location of the people, places or things they're claiming to have a poll on.
For example, we likely received this study declaring Mammoth Cave as so terribly dull because WCPO is close in proximity to Mammoth Cave and in the same state as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In some instances, the data from studies like this is compelling and well-sourced; in other instances, they aren't from a company with any expertise in the data set being collected, and data collection methodology is not always clear.
In this case, WCPO received an email on July 15 (though the same emails are sometimes sent multiple times) announcing "new research has revealed which tourist attractions in the US are the most disappointing."
The email claims the study was performed by a company called JeffBet — an online casino "experience" that says on its homepage that it's actually based in the United Kingdom.
So, what would they know about tourist attractions in the United States?
Well, the email says the study sourced from sites like Ranker, TripAdvisor, Google and other travel sites to aggregate each location's reviews.
"A seed list was created using Ranker, Time Out, World Travel Awards and TripAdvisor Traveller's Choice Awards," reads the email. "1–3-star reviews were collected for each location on both Google and Tripadvisor, identifying and counting the reviews where users stated they were disappointed. Locations with fewer than 100 combined reviews were removed. A review was counted as ‘disappointed’ if it included one or more of the 58 terms listed below."
In many instances, emails like these that are promoting studies done by a company — often a for-profit one — include actual data, or links to a document that shows more information about the study. This time, though, that was not the case — JeffBet included no additional information.
They did, however, include that roughly 19.38% of those who left a review on Mammoth Cave National Park "left feeling underwhelmed."
"Many users on both Google and TripAdvisor said that they felt rushed through their tour and that it was overcrowded, with one user saying that they had waited most of their life to see the cave, but was left feeling 'so disappointed,'" reads the email from JeffBet's digital PR agency.
Whether you trust review data aggregated by an online casino based in the UK using specific phrase searches or not, Mammoth Cave National Park does boast over 80 miles of hiking, biking, horseback riding and water trails — in addition to it being the home of the longest cave system in the world.
Still, for those whose fingers itch to leave reviews online, the park warns that there are, in fact, bugs in the outdoors, cell service in the national park is spotty, and cave tours may include stairs.
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