"The real mystery is why anyone came."
"Roadside attractions! Where they buy that hotdog and they buy that t-shirt and they wander around feeling satisfied on some level that they cannot truly describe and profoundly dissatisfied on a level beneath that."
— Mr. Wednesday, American Gods (2017), "House on the Rock"
No Road Trip Plot would be complete without quirky distractions! These establishments are designed to lure in tourists or travelers bored of a long drive, then entice the fools to part from some money before they depart from the place.
Roadside attractions can be anything from little museums of unusual oddities to outdoor art museums with unusual public art, even Greasy Spoons with a fun little gimmick that helps them stand apart from all the other diners that somehow survived the innovation of drive-thru restaurants.
They are typically available with purchase of admission and they will insist that you check out their gift shop. Most of these attractions are mom-and-pop businesses with nothing but their isolated community and tourist season keeping them afloat. Because of this, fiction likes to portray them as ramshackle and poorly made, yet criminally expensive to attend, often finding new and ridiculous things to add on to a Shockingly Expensive Bill.
At best, it operates on Very False Advertising and it's a huge letdown. At worst, it's Totally Not a Criminal Front, or it's nothing more than a transparent cover for the headquarters of a secret organization or a Milkman Conspiracy. Tourist Traps tend to get lost in the greater economic zeitgeist, so it's really easy to get away with certain things, making their anonymity both a blessing and a curse.
Compare Crappy Carnival, Museum of Boredom, Souvenir Land, and Suck E. Cheese's. Expect them to have a Kitschy Local Commercial for their establishment.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The Fledgling Demon Lord's Starter Shop: The Demon Lord's Keep where Mao had her last stand against the Hero Party has since been turned into a tourist's attraction where visitors are offered tours through what was once the home of demonkind. Mao is equal parts mortified and horrified to see her former castle treated like this, especially when she sees children dressed in the costumes of the people who defeated her while eating "Hero Biscuits" and "Hero Tea" (her new boss and husband included).
- Girls und Panzer der Film introduces us to the Boko Museum, an exhibition of everything to do with the bewildering Boko franchise of stuffed bears, to the joy of Miho and the bewilderment of just about everyone else. Sadly, the museum is — for some reason — in dire financial straits, which becomes a driving element of the film's plot ...
Comic Strips
- Garfield: Whenever Jon goes on vacation, he often ends up at some trashy, overpriced place, like one strip when he ended up at a "resort" that charged him $23 for an overcooked hamburger without condiments or sides. Garfield, of course, snarks about it every time but sometimes Jon actually enjoys whatever tacky roadside attraction he's visiting.
Films — Animation
- Lester's Possum Park in A Goofy Movie is a small opossum theme park. The main part we see is the Possum Posse Jamboree, an animatronic musical show reminiscent of Disney's own Country Bear Jamboree or a particularly bad Chuck-E-Cheese restaurant. The song the animatronic band plays makes Max cringe and one of the animatronics is so broken it just splutters electronic noises and sparks. Goofy has fond memories of the park from his youth, but Max finds the experience unbearable.
- Dino Stop in The Mitchells vs. the Machines is a convenient store/gift shop/"museum" with poorly-made dinosaur statues outside, their exhibits both goofy-looking and scientifically inaccurate, much to the horror of dinosaur fanboy Aaron Mitchell.
Aaron: Dinosaurs didn't look that way. DINOSAURS DIDN'T LOOK THAT WAY!
Films — Live-Action
- The Clown Museum from Another Cinema Snob Movie is a kitschy roadside museum that has displays of serial killers, all of whom use a clown motif. In reality, the mannequins are people the museum's curator Bally Joe had kidnapped and used his mind-control technology on, keeping them all alive by feeding them human meat. It's implied that the entire town is in on the conspiracy because his museum keeps their town's economy afloat.
- Captain Spaulding's Museum of Monsters and Madmen from House of 1000 Corpses is a roadside gas station that doubles as an eatery and an oddities Museum, complete with an on-rails tour of the nation's most depraved serial killers ("Captain Spaulding's Murder Ride"). While the whole establishment is impressive on the surface, Captain Spaulding himself is a Monster Clown with a murderous temper who likes to send his customers in the direction of a family of killers (the Firefly Family) and the Mad Scientist Dr. Satan just down the road.
- In Rat Race, Randy Pear is on a race across the US to try and win 2 million dollars. His family doesn't know he's a contestant in this so he's had to drag them along from the casino where the race started. Midway there his daughter, Jillian, spots a roadside sign for a "Barbie Museum" and begs to go. Randy refuses until his wife Bev forces the issue... and to the entire family's horror they find out it's not about the beloved doll, but real life member of the SS Klaus "The Butcher of Lyon" Barbie
and the museum is run for and by Neo Nazis (and to make matters worse, the Pears are Jewish!).
- Played for Horror in Tourist Trap. The film revolves around a group of teenagers having their car break down and they receive help from Mister Slausen who operates a tourist trap called Slausen's Lost Oasis. One by one the teenagers are tormented by creepy mannequins before being murdered by the film's killer. It's eventually revealed that the killer is Mister Slausen himself who caught his brother Davy having an affair with his wife before using his telekinetic powers to murder both of them and subsequently convert their bodies into mannequins.
- Mentioned but not fully shown in the first Sonic movie, during the "road trip" part of the film. Sonic comes across a sign for "The World's Largest Rubberband Ball" and begs to see it. While Tom refuses (what with the whole "on the run from the Government and a crazy egomanical scientist" thing), Sonic goes anyway; he's gone for all of two seconds thanks to his Super-Speed and admits it was, in fact, lame. Gift shop was cool, though.
Literature
- Constance Verity Saves the World: One of Connie's past adventures involved her having to uncover a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax involving a mechanical Stock Ness Monster. Afterwards, the town would rename the lake "Lake Lake Monster" and put the monster on display as a tourist attraction.
- In Helen and Troy's Epic Road Quest, landmarks of importance for quests and questers typically take the form of roadside attractions that exist within the Fantasy Americana otherworld quests typically occur in. Such landmarks include the town of Gateway, Nevada (where people come to wrestle Clifford the Cyclops), convenience stores run by personifications of fate, dragon wildlife preserves, a bed-and-breakfast run by a witch that will try to cook and eat them as payment for hospitality, and a Souvenir Land where important MacGuffins are given to customers as prizes for games which is actually a front for summoning the Lost God ran by its Cult.
- Bill Bryson remarked on bored children looking for some distraction and his father's ability to find terrible roadside attractions when driving.
- Breakfast of Champions has Sacred Miracle Cave, a tourist trap to the south of Shepherdstown, which is advertised on billboards and signposts planted throughout the state. Dwayne Hoover owns it in partnership with two other men who derive all of their income from it. The merchandise includes a "Visit Sacred Miracle Cave" bumper sticker which Francine Pefko, Dwayne's secretary and mistress, adorns her GTO with in a gesture of loyalty to her boss. The cave's main chamber, known as the Cathedral of Whispers, is wired for music and colored lights and has served as the venue for thousands of weddings, including those of all three of its owners. Other attractions include a boulder painted to resemble Moby-Dick; Jesse James, a skeleton acquired from a local doctor holding bits of a revolver; and a line of plaster statues of black "slaves" hacking at their chains. The only relation Sacred Miracle Cave ever had to actual slaves is that its land once belonged to a freed slave named Josephus Hoobler whose descendants owned it until The Great Depression happened and the bank foreclosed. The caverns had never been inhabited or even entered until being discovered by Dwayne after his family acquired the farm in a legal settlement. Unfortunately for the future of tourism, the underground river that flows through the caverns is filling up with bad chemicals, discoloring the fake artifacts and emitting a horrible stench.
- In Bored of the Rings, the protagonists visit Lornadoon Elf Village, whose attractions are tacky and artificial as any.
- Elf Defense: Jenny Franklin's antique shop is on the more high-end scale of the trope but still sells fake historical merchandise to any tourist unwise enough to walk in.
Live-Action TV
- In American Gods (2017), roadside attractions are built in places that people feel hold some special significance, making them Places of Power according to the belief-based cosmology the series runs on, hence why gods will convene to them for matters of importance. Even then, Wednesday implies that as fulfilling as humans find in them, it leaves them with a sense of profound dissatisfaction. The only exception to this we see in the series is The Center of America Motel, a place that actually isn't at the exact center (the pig-farmer wouldn't sell) and is so devoid of that transcendent spark that the gods like to use it as The Neutral Zone.
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: The teaser of "Subspace Rhapsody" establishes that Pike and Batel are planning a trip together. Pike has a This Is Gonna Suck face when describing Batel's chosen destination of Crivo, which he considers "cliché," "touristy" and "like my nightmare."
- Supernatural: In Season 3, Dean and Sam investigate a Florida tourist trap called "The Mystery Spot" with the assumption that genuine supernatural activities are happening there. It turns out to be anything but genuine and is instead an obvious, but playful tourist trap. Sam gets trapped in a "Groundhog Day" Loop for entirely unrelated reasons, however, and multiple very dark things happen at The Mystery Spot.
Music
- "Weird Al" Yankovic's "The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota" doesn't so much make fun of the tourist attraction (which sounds to be nothing more or less than its name implies) but rather the kind of person, as represented by the narrator himself, who finds it unironically amazing, thought-provoking, and worth a long road trip just to stand in front of. The song also name checks several real world tourist attractions (though many are now defunct) as the singer lists off the other places his family has visited.
Video Games
- The Questionable Area? from Psychonauts 2 is an abandoned roadside attraction located near the Quarry where Psychonauts HQ is located. Because of the massive amount of psitanium deposits in the area, the entire area is home to a lot of unusual paranormal activity (most notably a waterfall that flows upward) and a lot of unanswered questions (a Running Gag of the area is that everything in it is punctuated by a question mark). It would eventually be turned into a tourist destination, including a cryptid display in a cave, a playground, and the Lumberstack Diner. This location would inspire Ford Cruller (who at the time was a park ranger) to form the Psychic Six, eventually culminating in the formation of the Psychonauts. By the time Raz visits the area, the Questionable Area? is (nearly) abandoned and has fallen into disrepair.
- Sam & Max Hit the Road is filled with a bunch of them as Sam & Max travel across America to solve the mystery.
- The World's Largest Ball of Twine in Minnesota serves as an early stop in the trip. It even has a rotating restaurant built over the top of it.
- Gator Golf used to be a typical miniature golf course, but after it got flooded by a storm and infested with alligators the owner turned it into a driving range.
- The Celebrity Vegetable Museum is famous for its farm growing vegetables that look like various celebrities.
- Mount Rushmore itself has been repurposed for tourists to include cheap animatronic prehistoric animals and tar pits, complete with bungee jumping.
- Frog Rock only barely resembles what could be a frog from the right angle. Max admits that even though he didn't pay anything to see it, he wants his money back.
- The Mystery Vortex attracts tourists because Reality Is Out to Lunch inside and the laws of physics are all warped around.
- Fallout:
- Fallout 4:
- The Museum of Freedom in Concord (where you first meet Preston Garvey) was clearly trash even before the Great War.
- Ditto for Henry David Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond.
Automated Tour: Hello. Welcome to Walden Pond. You are now standing in front of the cabin inhabited by transcendentalist writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, starting in the summer of 1845. For two years, two months, and two days, Thoreau lived in this cabin, hoping to gain a more objective understanding of society. This was influenced by Thoreau's interest in transcendentalist philosophy, which believed that people were at their best when truly self-reliant. By living off the land with few material possessions, Thoreau proved it skeptical to think that any outward improvement of life could bring inner peace and happiness. For more information, please visit the gift shop and purchase one of the many books on Transcendentalism. Also available; t-shirts, coffee mugs, toys, and many other items to commemorate your trip! Thank you for visiting Walden Pond, sponsored by General Atomics, maker of the Mister Handy robotic assistant.
- Nuka-World offers Wixon's Shovel Museum. Here you can find many famous shovels from throughout history, including those wielded by the feared British Shovel Fighters during the Revolutionary War, one used by Abraham Lincoln's cousin's neighbor to build a latrine in 1862 that the future 16th president might have used, a recreation of a Stone Age shovel "if it were made in modern times in Mexico," a stunt shovel used by Keith McKinney for action sequences in Ditch Diggers of Dusseldorf, a shovel used by Jean Luc Allard to scoop up manure dropped by Napoleon's horse during ceremonial parades, and a "long-handled spade" that while technically not a shovel was popular from April 3, 1963 to April 7, 1963. A number of the shovels are no longer present, as some of the raiders who've taken up residence in Nuka-World have stolen them and repurposed them as stocks for their guns.
- Fallout: New Vegas:
- Novac is known for Dinky the Dinosaur, a giant model T-Rex that promotes the town's motel and holds "the world's second largest thermometer" in its hands.note During the events of New Vegas, the balcony housed in his jaw is used as a sniper's nest by Craig Boone and Manny Vargas, a pair of ex-NCR First Recon snipers who protect the town from feral ghouls that approach from the nearby REPCONN test site as well as members of Caesar's Legion approaching from Cottonwood Cove and Nelson. It is here where Boone was stationed on the night that the Legion kidnapped his wife with help of a local resident, and the quest you have to complete to gain him as a companion involves luring out the traitor so he can snipe them. In the second season premiere of the TV series, Lucy MacLean stations herself here as part of a con that she and the Ghoul are pulling on some Great Khans who have taken over the town wherein she saves him from being hanged after turning him in to collect a bounty they have out on him.
- Primm has the Vikki and Vance Casino, named after America's fourth (or maybe fifth) most infamous Outlaw Couple. Seen as copycats of more successful outlaw duos like Bonnie and Clydenote , Vikki and Vance were a pair of white collar criminals who engaged in shoplifting, check-cashing fraud, gas pump driveoffs, and reckless drivingnote . They were killed in Plano, Texas when they got caught in the crossfire between police and a group of bank robbers, after which the police issued an official apology for their deaths. The idea of making a casino themed after them, especially far from any place where they were relevant, comes off as particularly desperate.
- Fallout 4:
- ROUTINE is set on a moon base whose main attraction is Union Plaza, a mall that looks straight out of The '90s by way of Used Future. The station seems to be in financial straits, as evidenced by logs, the used and worn out feel of the environment, and abundance of clearance sales and closed down shops. Notably their top selling items are a ridiculously cute Companion Cube and an ultraviolet light fixture for repair equipment.
- Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon': One of the first destinations in the game is Fester's "World O' Wonders" on the Death World Phleebut, a place where Roger can sell his gem from the previous installment for cash, and buy most of the items he needs to win the game along with any other tacky souvenirs the owner can sell. Bonus points for the option to defeat the Terminator Impersonator who attacks Roger Wilco as soon as he leaves the store in a Monumental Battle within the giant Rent-a-Zilla statue there.
Western Animation
- Amphibia: "Wax Museum", a pseudo-crossover with Gravity Falls (see below), has Anne and the Plantars visit the "Curiosity Hut", a Mystery Shack Expy run by a Grunkle Stan Expy named Curator Ponds. The difference is that the Curiosity Hut's waxwork figures are very much real, and Curator Ponds plans for Anne to become his next exhibit. Notably, the locals are too creeped out by the place to actually go and visit.
- Arthur: "D.W. Goes to Washington" has a flashback to the time D.W. talked the family into visiting "Santa's Igloo" ("Share a sundae with Santa and his friendly reindeer!"). Contrary to what the place's commercial and billboard showed, the "igloo" turns out to be an ordinary house with a cheap igloo facade attached to the front and "Santa" is a surly, disheveled man dressed in half of a Santa suit who growls at the Reeds for not bringing a sundae to share. Despite this, D.W. still thought it was amazing — the rest of the family not so much.
- Ben 10: Ben and his family stop to see the world's largest rubber band ball in the appropriately named episode "Tourist Trap". It's revealed to be used as a prison for an alien creature made of pure electricity called a Nosedeenian (nicknamed "Megawatt"), escaping from its prison when Ben's omnitrix makes contact with it. They end up destroying the rubber band ball, but then they replace it with the world's largest lightbulb instead.
- Daria: "Daria the Hunter" sees Daria and Jane ditching a class paintballing trip when a rainstorm occurs, and they take refuge inside of a shark-themed tourist trap whose owner is just ripping off the movie Jaws, describing her encounter with "Great White" as if she was Quint.
- Doug: "Doug's Bad Trip" has the Funnies go on a long car trip to the Great Painted Gorge, but Doug and Judy keep seeing billboards that advertise tourist traps. They all turn out to be disappointments. The first advertised as having a mysterious creepy thing turned out to be just a potato that looks vaguely like a vampire bat, the second stating to be a bug ranch was just a bunch of bugs in miniature barns, the third was claimed to be a poetic field but was just a desert with a sign.
- Gravity Falls:
- The Mystery Shack is the primary location of the series, acting as a Ripley's-style museum of "oddities", which are all just fake displays and an overpriced gift shop. Ironically, one of the ways Grunkle Stan showcases himself to have standards is by swindling people with makeshift monsters only and absolutely refusing to touch (let alone display) the real monsters of Gravity Falls, because Stan knows that they are way too dangerous. Dipper discovers this the hard way in "Boss Mabel", when he exploits the fact Stan left for a while to capture a monster for display and the thing puts two tourists in the hospital. It was originally Stanford "Ford" Pines' house/laboratory for his research into the genuinely weird things that happen in town. After he winds up lost in The Multiverse through his portal under the building, his brother Stanley took on his identity and has been working decades to bring his brother back, turning it into the Mystery Shack in order to keep the lights on.
- The Tent of Telepathy is a tourist attraction owned by recurring antagonist Gideon Gleeful where he gives his faith-healing Phony Psychic performances.
- The episode "Roadside Attraction" involves Stanley bringing the twins and Mabel's friends on a road trip through Redwood Highway to get back at his competitors in their petty feud. Such competitors include a Corn Maze, Granny Sweetkin's Yarnball, House Shoe, Log Land, The Big Thing, The Giant Pan, Upside-Down Town, and Mystery Mountain.
- In the Rocko's Modern Life episode "Road Rash", Rocko and Heffer go on a road trip to see Flemm Rock, a supposed natural wonder that's about to get paved over. The rock turns out to be incredibly small.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: In "A SquarePants Family Vacation", SpongeBob and Patrick stumble upon a random gift shop while lost, only to realize they've walked right into a tourist trap. While they try to escape, SpongeBob ends up getting sucked in and spends all his money on useless trinkets.