Ripley's Believe It Or Not

I've been to many of the Riley's museums around the country. This is right on par with the others. Good variety of oddities and fun facts (or fiction). Kids liked it. Nice way to spend an hour if you're downtown dells.

Ok, first off, I've been to the old location before they made the move to the old Wizard's Quest building so I know what that place looked like. I'm not a local so I don't know why they moved and left a perfectly styled Indiana Jones temple lookalike vacant and empty but I digress.

My mom really wanted to come and so we decided to give the new location a try since things were supposed to be new and updated. They did not lie about that. Things have been updated but most of the really quirky and museumy stuff unfortunately has gotten the boot it seems. In place of those items are now quirky and unique art projects, slippy slides, neon walls, and a scavenger hunt. I found the theming a bit off, they basically put artifacts in closet spaces to accommodate the weird rooms that were once Wizard's Quest.

Don't get me wrong, the kids loved it and we spent probably 1.5 - almost 2 hours here but that was because we had kids who wanted to slide and crawl and climb everything. Adults might get through in an hour and that might be generous.

I really do miss the weird museum stuff though. The spooky dark halls, musty rooms, and dimly lit cabinets. Now that was eerie and that was the Ripley's I remember as a kid. The theming here just doesn't quite fit with oddities. It's more of a quirky art gallery with a few severed heads thrown in. Still interesting but not quite Ripley's...

The manager here encourages online reviews so I thought I'd leave one. So much so, that it was more important for him to convince the couple in front of us to leave one than to collect the $120 for tickets from the two of us. Even after the couple encouraged him to turn in our direction and do so. Needless to say, we decided to allow him to keep up with his spiel. He managed to convince me anyway!

The Wisconsin Dells Ripley's recently changed locations and is now in the old Wizard Quest building. And, despite adding a new name on the signage, it feels like the owners did the bare minimum to actually transom this space into a Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum. Remnants of the space's life as Wizard Quest can be seen everywhere in the form of colorful paint jobs, annoying slides visitors have to use to get from room to room and a tacky mirror maze.

Now I could forgive all this if this attraction actually had what we were promised -- strange and unusual artifacts. Alas, aside from a few fun knick knacks like a severed head here and pole dancing mouse taxidermy there, there were barely any items on display in this "museum."

This literally felt like a highway robbery and I'm peeved. The old location was so much better!

Great art exhibits! Fun historical tidbits and curios. Engaging and fun for both adults and kiddos. Loved it!

We found it to be too expensive for what it's worth. It felt more like an art museum with weird facts. My 11 year old liked it, but left frustrated because the scavenger hunt was fun, but too difficult. If we can do it over it would've only been one parent supervising the kids. It should've been more like $10-$15 dollars IMO.

Ripley's Believe it or Not Museums... they are what they are. Full of weird, interesting stuff. Worth the price of admission if you've never been in one before.

Loved the quest to find all the hidden animals. The secret rooms were really neat and kept us busy for over an hour. Several sections were damaged or under construction.

I used to LOVE Ripleys Believe it or not, it was a family staple, we visited it every year (sometimes multiple times during the year) however they opened up the new Ripleys where Wizard Quest used to be and it's the most disappointing thing we've seen. The staff is incredibly nice and helpful but they said they only brought in 10% of the actual oddities from the previous Ripley Believe it or Not which becomes evident when you go in. Now it's just a weird Wizard Quest knock off. We used to enjoy reading about all the oddities...now you mainly just see taxidermy animals that you have to find for their scavenger hunt. The oddities have been replaced by pop culture paintings and art. As adults without kids we had no desire to continuously go down a slide, go through ball pit, and CRAWL through a tunnel to find stuff. They literally used the old Wizard Quest set up and replaced the Wizard Quest decorations with pop culture and taxidermy animals. It's also NOT disability friendly, it's gonna be almost impossible to walk through here with a cane or wheelchair so definitely double check with them. I had boots on and they dont have a solid floor on top, they have a grated floor with holes so my heel literally got stuck in the grate and my family had to help me get out of it. I really miss the old Ripleys and sadly, we won't be back =(

Ok but not a large place. We walked through in about 15 minutes. Staff were nice and answered any questions we had.