A 1-star review called a whaling museum the 'worst aquarium ever.' They agreed and put it on a shirt

Snaking through the cobblestone streets and 19th-century clapboard buildings, the New Bedford Whaling Museum is tucked on 18 Johnny Cake Hill. A glimpse inside reveals the world’s largest whaling boat model, the Lagoda, thousands of ivory scrimshaw pieces, and real whale skeletons hanging from the ceilings. Given its historic significance, the museum is visited by more than 91,000 people each year. In 2020, however, one negative Google review threatened to destroy the museum’s reputation. Six years later, the museum has turned it into a genius marketing campaign that has made fans go crazy, as reported in a July 23, 2026 video by CBS News. The museum started a chain of merchandise t-shirts with that review printed on the back and a whale skeleton on the front. 

Marketing gold

Now the strange review is getting its own review on sweatshirts, crewnecks, t-shirts, and bags that are being sold in the museum for visitors to buy. "For the last couple of years, we've been joking that it should be on a t-shirt," Conway said. "We said, let's do it, let's try it, do a test run, see how it goes." There is no aquarium in the museum, except for a small fish tank which was added years later after the review.

The mind-bending review that the person wrote that broke the internet was “Worst aquarium ever.” The only problem was that it isn’t an aquarium, but a whaling museum. "We do not have live whales here, and so we are actually the worst aquarium ever," the museum’s chief engagement officer Annelise Conway told WJAR. Paul Bousquet, a resident, reflected that this was the best approach they could have done with the review. A visitor named Noah Souza said it’s “ridiculous” that the person mistook it as an aquarium given that it is just a whale exhibit and no real whales are swimming around here.  

Reviews rave from the rooftops

The New Bedford Whaling Museum's unusual response to the review is especially clever because museums generally receive overwhelmingly positive feedback. An analysis of 813,000 visitor remarks from 500 attractions across 37 countries found that history and cultural museums had an average rating of 4.62 out of 5, with 78.4% of reviews giving them five stars. Visitor experience was also strongly tied to emotion, with “joy” appearing in 60.8% of remarks. That makes the museum's decision to embrace its bizarre one-star review even more memorable. Rather than hide from an embarrassing mistake, it turned the review into a joke visitors could take home with them.

English satire at its best

Viewers flooded the comments section with notes of positive experiences they had in the museum. @nataliaradziejewska commented, “That museum is incredible. And that they turned that stupid review into merch is the most Massachusetts thing ever.” @msrcwrigley said, “That's hilarious. You can't fit a whale in an aquarium, at least not ethically."

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