How Can I Get This Visitor Attraction Accepted
AScarletSabre-PGO
Posts: 754 ✭✭✭✭✭
The two rejection reasons given to me are "poor quality photograph" and "does not meet criteria". I assumed that as a major hotspot in the town it would be accepted. It's not exactly a theme park but it has lots of amusement. It's even listed on the county tourism website (but I only linked to their official website in the supplemental information):
Comments
It was probably rejected because this is a business. It is also a chain with many locations. It’s like mc Donald’s. Will be hard to get it accepted.
Escape rooms are fine. I like those and things like bowling alleys and laser tag. I saw a lot of escape rooms on my Google search but it didn't look like a major chain with like dozens of locations. Picture and write seem appropriate. You may want to address the social aspect in an explicit manner in the supplemental information section. People might not be understanding why it qualifies.
Put a bit more effort into your supporting info and see if that helps. Explain how it meets the criteria
Yes, I should be more explicit, even though I should not have to be. Such a place is a great place to be social, to exercise and for exploration. It ticks all of the criteria. It a shame, because I was on a good run of like ten nominations in a row accepted.
I agree that I would vote in favor of an escape room as a POI, though many would reject because it is a business. The nature of the escape room is exploratory, in addition to the social aspect.
That said, is there some kind of decoration, statue, or art on/inside/around the building that might make for an easier sell?
I would follow the above advice. But I do see one or two stupid people rejecting it because they thought it was a real prison.
I brought up escape rooms before and at the time, many people opposed them claiming that they were temporarily and few existed for more than a few months. Maybe sentiments have changed since then, but you also have to deal with the anti-busines bias among reviewers as well.
I agree that escape rooms in general meet the social criteria, and perhaps the exploration criteria. But unless the particular escape room involves some sort of physical challenge, I think it's a real stretch to say they meet the exercise criteria. (At least based on my understanding of the idea of an escape room.)
I say this not as a strike against your submission, but only to advise that you really need to think about how your nomination specifically meets one or more of the acceptance criteria when you try to explain it to reviewers.
It includes psychical challenges, therefore it also meets the exercise criteria. I say that in the very first sentence of the nomination description. It's a direct quote from their official website, which includes images and videos to back up their claims. Therefore, if people are ignoring my plain English words, there are not reviewing properly.
Does it have to meet all 3 criteria? I am pretty sure it only has to meet at least one.
I would classify them as adventurous locations, which is a subset of exploration criteria. Socialization would be a secondary aspect since you have to work as a group to "escape". That should be plenty enough to overcome the first of the three hurdles that a nomination must pass.
Thank you for correcting me. I did not re-read your description before responding to that post.
No, they do not have to. My point was that if you're saying that something meets all three of the acceptance criteria, you should be able to support your argument for each of the three criteria you say it meets, especially when it may not be immediately obvious how your submission meets one of the mentioned acceptance criteria (which, as seen above, @AScarletSabre-PGO has done).
By the way, I tried a second time with an expanded description and it got rejected a second time!
Generally, I wait a few weeks to re-submit unless there's a good reason to re-submit right away such as being a specific location. It allows you to get a fresh batch of reviewers or at least give these ones a chance to forget they've rejected this before. Plus, cooling off after the anger of rejection let's me be objective. (I need to debate the pictures on my phone and a new description for the historic building I got rejected myself. Those have a lower than average rate of acceptance here. Reviewers are quite picky on them.) Keep the pictures and come back to it later.