My vote is for Cave City, Kentucky, near Mammoth Cave National Park. Besides the usual tee shirt shacks, the mandatory wax museum, and the rock shops selling colored glass, Cave City boasts Golgotha Golf (minature golf surrounding a 10’ Jesus) and the incomparable Wigwam Village - a motel where the rooms are a circle of concrete teepees complete with window-unit air conditioners!
Honolulu International Airport is one of the scariest places I’ve ever been as far as tacky tourist stuff. There are some freaky-looking dolls wearing “Hawaiian” (read: some hideous blend of turquoise, hot pink, and fluorescent green) outfits, cheesy silk flower or shell leis, and cheap ukuleles with weird designs on them. (They used to play 1920s-style Hawaiian music over the PA, but thankfully, they stopped that a while ago.)
Waikiki is tacky, but in a uniquely tacky way. It’s almost charming.
It’ gotta be STONE MOUNTAIN.
They have barn ads 50 miles away on every approach.
And some of the crappiest “Old Man of the Mountain” postcards of cheesy mountain crags that resemble nothing.
Hartwig Gobbler Motel in Wisconsin. When I look at the website, I go blind.
Wall, South Dakota.
The entire town is a tourist trap built around a tourist trap - Wall Drug, an oversized drugstore filled with effluvia no one in their right mind would want, unless you have an inexplicable craving for a jackalope.
It’s like if you, me, and two more people who couldn’t spell or
write well tried to make a theme park.
Las Vegas
Geez, none of you must have driven to Florida from the Northeast before. Otherwise you might have mentioned South of the Border! Notable for the ENDLESS billboards announcing how many miles it is. Kept me quite entertained as a youth.
Also, to go along with Jackmanii, another fine South Dakota “attraction” is the Corn Palace in Mitchell. It is, of course, “The World’s Only Corn Palace”. Just look at the picture on this page and tell me you wouldn’t want to see this: http://www.cornpalace.org/cornpalace.html
Yeah, definitely South of the Border. You have to love any place with HUGE fireworks stores. It can’t be nearly as much fun since SC outlawed video poker, though. Those state-line casinos were soooo classy.
shuffles forward
Okay, I have a confession. 2 of the above mentioned places are destinations for my family’s vacations. And darn it, I was PO’ed when I didn’t get to go last fall!! (Oh, yeah - Jackmannii, I not only have a craving for jackalope… I collect them. And a postcard of the Corn Palace is prominently displayed on my room door here at school.)
I vote for Graceland. Once upon a time, I lived in Memphis. My family hosted at least one friend a year who made the “pilgrimage.” It was SICK. Anyone who decorates in shag carpet should die of a drug overdose on the toilet. Hah, wait a minute 
This condemnation includes not only the house, but also the car museum and Elvis’s plane… handily parked right across the street, IIRC.
Niagara Falls.
carlsbad caverns have a cafeteria at the bottom. the food is awful and the decor is like 1950’s bomb shelter/high school cafeteria- maybe it’s the rock walls and lack of windows. anyway, it’s bizarre. it’s more conceptually tacky than physically garish though. subterranean splendor of nature’s infinite beauty? needs a cafeteria!
just on the west edge of houston is this place called the forbidden gardens- some kind of chinese themed park? i haven’t been, but supposedly they replicated that terra cotta army they found in some emperor’s tomb in china- in katy! why would you DO that? although it’s better than another wal-mart.
-fh
SmackFu Of Course I remember all those signs!!
Also Little America, Wyoming. Billed itself as having the world’s largest gas station - 55 pumps. Makes me a little melancholy thinking about it. A town making that their point of pride. My sister says I’m way too sentimental.
Branson, Missouri. It was over 10 years ago when I was there, it was all C&W ‘music’ shows and tourist tat shops. The average age of the visitors seemed to be around 104.
Hell, I used to LIVE about 20 miles from there. A little known fact: at pone time, they had a ‘Dirty Old Man’s’ shop at the back of one of the stores - sold hard-core porn. Alot of the men would come in with there wives, and while the ladies were looking at overpriced ‘crafts’, the men were looking over the latest issues of ‘Juggs’ and ‘Anal Masters IV’
“Pedro’s weather forecast: Chili today, Hot tamale!” (Just an example of one of those wonderful billboards.)
You have missed out on THE tackiest tourist trap, once located in the heart of the DisneyWorld area:
Xanadu - Home of the Future
The building is still (mostly) intact, but the attraction closed several years ago, since it wasn’t drawing a lot of people (small wonder).
The outside:
Picture a foam (no concrete, made from all solid foam over a steel support) onion dome from a Russian Orthodox church, with smaller domes attached to the main dome. In white. Actually dirty white. No square corners anywhere - the home of the future would be rounded and smooth lines.
The inside:
Imagine the future as pictured in the movies of the 1960s - shag carpeting, deep couches (remember the ‘conversation pits’?), tv and stereo system inset into the walls (of course, these were the cardboard models that are used in the furniture stores), no corners in any rooms.
The children’s bed was nothing more than a recess into the wall (I remember a scary orange beadspread) - almost looked like an animal den: small and cramped (‘cozy’, according to the informational sign).
Cleaning your clothes in the future:
‘No need for water or dry-cleaning - clothes of the future would be cleaned by sound waves.’
The sonic washing machine - there was an actual hand-on demonstration of this - press a button and an alcove would light up. Seconds later, a shirt on a hanger would start vibrating, demostrating the ‘power of sound cleaning your clothes’.
There was much more, but these were the most pathetic, not to mention there was no upkeep on the building, peeling paint and places where bored kids picked apart the foam walls. Oh, and the cardboard models of the computers - stylized early 80s (and this was early 90s).
All this for $9.95 plus tax. Or free, if you took a timeshare tour.
Our 2nd tackiest tourist trap just closed in December - Mystery Fun House. A walk-thru ‘haunted house/fun house’ that made a carnival dark ride look high-tech. Again, $9.95 plus tax (extra for Jurassic Mini-Golf, video arcade or Laser Tag).
I’ve never been to either area, but I understand that the area outside the Smoky Mountains park and the “Wisconsin Dells” are both supremely tacky. Look up descriptions of both at one of my favorite websites, http://www.roadsideamerica.com .
Of places I’ve visited, South of the Border in South Carolina and Niagara Falls (as it used to be 20+ years ago) were virtual heavens of tackiness.
Driving along I-95 S. to SC, you see the billboards for well over 200 miles (and the tradition is that everybody in the car HAS to read them out loud as you pass).
Another vote for South of the Border. That place is the epitomy of tacky.
Another I remember: “You never sausage a place. You’re always a weiner with Pedro.”
I have a jackalope. It’s head is mounted on a plaque and it is above my front door. I put a Santa hat on it’s antlers at Christmas. It is cool.
Sorry - back to your regularly scheduled thread…