I don't think even Mark Twain's words could do justice to the EXPERIENCE that is visiting the Niagara Wax Museum of History. It's like a time capsule of a really cool museum that was built 40 years ago, and the owners just wiped their hands, said "welp, we did it," and never once looked back. Visiting here is like going on an archaeological expedition through the ruins of 1970s kitsch.

Exhibits are in disrepair. A wax statue of Mother Teresa (that famous historical figure of Niagara Falls, right?) is leaning to the side. One display cabinet of fossils and minerals appears to be held together by packing tape and hope. There's an exhibit of an old-timey general store, with a frightening realistic shopkeeper, and several jars of candy. The candy is not wax---you can tell, because it's barely even candy anymore; over the last few decades it's congealed into an indecipherable mess. It's endearingly revolting.

In another room, an exhibit boasts an atomic clock that is 100% accurate, all of the time, forever. It's three hours slow. NOBODY HAS NOTICED, and nobody has done anything to fix it. Signage scattered around the museum was printed out on computer paper, now wrinkly and browning with age.

Perhaps the clearest indicator of neglect, though, was a display listing every U.S. President who's visited Niagara Falls. The last time it was updated was for Jimmy Carter.

I thought all of this was FANTASTIC. I'm glad my wife and I were the only visitors at the time, because I couldn't stop laughing and jumping around---yes, actually jumping around in excitement, and I'm almost thirty---at how weird and goofy and insane every single piece in this museum was.

It wasn't just that half the place was falling apart. That's nothing unique in Niagara Falls; EVERYTHING is falling apart here. But so many of the exhibits barely had anything to do with anything. You might see an exhibit on daredevils going down the falls, and in the next room over---there's a hall of presidents! With license plates from every state! And an animatronic statue of Mark Twain in a rocking chair, because I guess he mentioned the falls once in a story.

You're my kind of insanity, Niagara Wax Museum of History. Never change. (But I have a feeling I don't have to worry too much about that.)

The museum leads you to a gift shop at the end (of course), although there's almost nothing there that has anything to do with the museum itself; it's mostly generic Niagara Falls stuff. The only item I could find that actually said "Wax Museum" on it was a bumper sticker that looked like it was manufactured in 1972 and left sitting in a warehouse ever since, only recently unearthed and put on sale for less than a buck. (It didn't even have the museum's current name; it just said "Niagara's Museum of History U.S.A".) I wanted to buy them all and give them a good home.