Haters came for this ‘disappointing’ national park. It’s fighting back.

Mammoth Cave National Park is trying to lure tourists by quoting testimonials from some of the more than 550,000 visitors who check out the world’s longest cave system in Kentucky each year.

Nothing cool.

Very dark.

Not enjoyable.

“A world of regret awaits you at Mammoth Cave!” the national park wrote Friday on its Facebook page.

With tongue firmly in cheek, Mammoth Cave National Park leaned into the news that it had been ranked No. 3 on a list of the country’s “most disappointing U.S. tourist attractions.” The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Merritt Island, Florida, and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, topped the list. But unlike those two attractions, the national park tried to harness the dubious honor to highlight its assets.

“Experience what has disappointed millions of people for over 225 years!” the Facebook post begins.

Molly Schroer, a spokeswoman for Mammoth Cave National Park, said a co-worker sent her a link to a WEHT article about the park’s poor showing. The new study, which the TV station said was conducted by gaming website JeffBet, examined websites such as Google and Tripadvisor to home in on one- to three-star reviews and then searched for words like “disappointment” and “subpar” to identify dissatisfied visitors, according to the TV Station. Nearly one in five said they were disappointed with the national park.

Schroer said she immediately recognized the bad ranking as an opportunity to mock the bad reviews. Peppering the post with exclamation points to highlight the dissatisfaction, Schroer and her colleague wrote about “many activities that will leave you unfulfilled!”

“You can be disappointed by a ‘dry hole with very few stalagmites and stalactites’ or discover nothing ‘other than trees’ on over 80+ miles of hiking, biking, horseback riding, and water trails,” she wrote before mentioning some of the reviewers’ criticisms of the Mammoth Cave experience: bugs, bad cell service and stairs.

About 100,000 Facebook users have reacted to the post, some 30,000 have shared it and nearly 9,000 have commented.

“It’s been overwhelmingly positive,” Schroer said.

There’s a long history of organizations leaning into their products’ perceived liabilities. Advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach revolutionized the industry with its “Think Small” and “Lemon” advertisements for what would become known as the Volkswagen Beetle, according to Medium. The agency did something similar for rental car company Avis, turning its runner-up status to Hertz into ad fodder with the slogan “When you’re only No. 2, you try harder.”

And for five years, the Cornhusker state’s slogan was “Nebraska. Honestly, it’s not for everyone.” John Ricks, director of the Nebraska Tourism Commission, told lawmakers this year that when he started his job in 2016, Nebraska ranked dead last in states that travelers were interested in visiting because it had a reputation as flat and boring, according to the Nebraska Examiner.

One of the ads from the campaign features a half dozen revelers floating down a river under the ad copy “Lucky for you, there’s nothing to do here.”

“The only way we could get their attention, honestly, was by agreeing with them, and then counteracting it,” Ricks said in February.

Schroer said she believes Mammoth Cave National Park’s ranking is just wrong. Most visitors who have a bad experience walk in expecting to breeze into their choice of cave tour only to realize that many sell out, especially in the summer. A visitor expecting a quick tour who ends up enduring a four-hour cave tour is going to be disappointed, Schroer said, adding that she recommends people make reservations on the park’s website before coming.

With a wink and a smile, past visitors leaped into the comment sections to say they had had terrible experiences at the park.

One echoed the criticisms from the post: “I’ve been disappointed in the place since I was 6. 61 years of being let down (pun fully intended). I don’t know why I keep coming back. I’m mean, it just takes forever for anything to change in that hole.”

Another piled on: “What really killed it for us was that there was no WiFi. What are my kids supposed to do when their tablets have no connection? They were forced to be present in the moment and enjoy nature raw and beautiful.”

Even a local was unimpressed.

“I’ve been disappointed on Every. Single. Tour,” she wrote, making sure to punctuate her displeasure with multiple exclamation points. “Can’t ever get enough of the miserable geology, history, and nature right out my back door!!”