Ken Ham's Ark Encounter has been standing in Williamstown, Kentucky since 2016, and somehow it's still one of the most confusing tourist traps in America.
It's a 510-foot wooden replica of Noah's Ark, built to the exact dimensions described in the Bible, and it cost roughly $100 million to construct.
For those unfamiliar, the Ark Encounter is the brainchild of Answers in Genesis, the same organization behind the Creation Museum down the road.
The pitch is simple: what if the biblical flood story was literally, historically, scientifically true, and what if we built a life-size version so you could walk through it and feel something?
Visitors can tour three decks of exhibits featuring animatronic animals, cages, and explanations of how Noah supposedly fit two of every species on Earth onto a wooden boat.
The attraction has drawn millions of visitors and plenty of eye rolls.
Critics point out that the whole thing was partially funded by taxpayer dollars through a tourism tax rebate program, which feels like a fun twist for a project rooted in rejecting mainstream science.
The ark also features a restaurant called "Searches of the Lost Ark" — no, really — and a zip line, because nothing says reverence for divine judgment quite like a zip line.
The biblical dimensions — 300 cubits long, 50 wide, 30 high — work out to roughly 510 feet by 85 feet by 51 feet.
The ark can't float, obviously, because it sits on concrete pillars.
It's basically a very expensive shed shaped like a boat.
And the exhibits inside gloss over some of the more unsettling parts of the flood narrative, like the part where basically everything on Earth drowns.
The whole operation reportedly cost around $100 million and has been criticized for everything from its labor practices to its tax incentives to its sheer existence.
In 2021, the attraction won a lawsuit allowing it to discriminate in hiring based on religion, which is a sentence I just typed with my own two hands.
You can now work at the ark, but only if you believe the ark is real.
Because America loves a spectacle, and there's something undeniably fascinating about a $100 million monument to a story that scientists say never happened the way it's being sold.
A very specific, very expensive, very Kentucky vibe.
Look, I'm not here to tell you whether to visit.
I'm just saying that if you're going to spend $100 million on a boat, you could at least make it float.
Final Thoughts
But hey, that's just my opinion, and I'm not the one selling $50 tickets to walk through a wooden box and stare at animatronic giraffes.