Fantastic Caverns — Attraction in Springfield

Sunday Jan 12 th 2025.

Jared our tour guy was so amazing and funny. He completely recovered my sister's experience and hopefully in the future Brent the cashier won't be there. Thank you to Jared. I brought my sister here to experience the cave. She is from Washington State visiting. She's been fighting cancer for the last year and she has finally gotten well enough to travel so we flew here up here to visit. Anyhow Brent the cashier was extremely curt with us from the get-go. Maybe he's new, maybe he found our crew off-putting. I walk to the counter and he asked how many people. I handed forth our 4 passes and stated that we needed to purchase two additional adult tickets. Then he asked for IDs to go along with all of the passes. Absolutely no problem, I handed forth everybody's ID. But I did say to my sister "that's new!" And then he got all defensive. I asked about whether or not they had been having problems with customers. He said that they "we're trying to curb people using passes for people who were not on the pass." Of course He had my passes and all of our IDs during this conversation and I had already told him that we needed two additional adult passes. Anyhow he checked us in and spouted the fee for the 2 adult tickets . My daughter who was along works for a local bank asked about a discounts that her boss told her she would get there. " We don't do discounts" Brent snapped. My sister was paying and I said " not even for disability or military ( which they would qualify for) and he said sternly. "No. No discounts" at this point my daughter is getting mad at his clear rudeness and my sister is baffled at his strange demeanor. My sister looks at me confused as to why he is being so rude and my daughter is just getting madder. So she says " I'll have to let my bank manager know there are no discounts because it was on our website as a place we get a discount" and then Brent went to a different counter and grabbed a 3 ring binder flopped it on a counter opened it and ran his finger down a page and said " No, not on the list, look for yourself " I said "no , that's not necessary " and my daughter said "we don't need to look" then he slaps the book shut and I say to my daughter in front of him "funny though he has a book with a list of places and discounts but they don't DO DISCOUNTS!" then we walked away. I was livid at this point. My sister came to this cave to experience the scenery not Brent's attitude. Thankfully Jared our tour guide was absolutely hilarious and we had a great time. We always enjoy the tour. We recommend the passes because each time we go you learn something new. All the tour guides give the same basic information but each one adds their own flare and has some different tidbit of information either on the cave, the local area or the stories. It's always a fun time. ( In spite of...

We called earlier in the day to ask about tickets and when the last tour was. We were informed we could just walk in and to be there about 10min early. We showed up around 7:50pm was informed the 8:00pm tour was all booked but they had a 8:15pm tour. The guy who sold us the tickets was extremely rude. He didn’t even greet us or say hi. He immediately goes 2 tickets. In an annoyed way. We tried to ask him questions about the tour and tickets and timing he was annoyed we were asking questions. He tells us we can get on the 8:15pm tour. Cool. So we take time to look around out front at the jeeps. As we had about 10min to kill. 2 employees then come out and yell at us that we are now on the 8:00pm tour and we needed to hurry up. We asked if we could keep our 8:15 time and another employee was rude and goes “we don’t do that anymore” so why did the employee who sold us the tickets sell us 8:15 tour times? We then had to squeeze on a tour bus that had THREE full size dogs. Why are dogs allowed that aren’t service animals? On top of that we had about 4 young kids on our tour that would talk over the guid and get scared anytime the lights went off. Also another way to ruin an experience. When you’re spending almost $100 on 2 tickets, I’d think you would have rules on allowing animals and maybe even an age restriction. At the end my boyfriend went up to an employee to ask about our earlier interaction and she apologized and told us the employees wanted to leave early and was embarrassed by her coworkers for how they treated us prior to the tour. Our tour guide was great and honestly saved the experience. The cave was cool but I’d think I’d tell people to go to Bridal Cave for a 5-star customer service...

Fantastic Caverns had been on my husband and I’s list of things to do in Springfield for quite awhile. I’m sad it was so disappointing and to leave this less than good review.

THE GOOD: The cave is beautiful. Our guide, Mark was enthusiastic and knowledgeable! We were glad to be on his tour. THANKFULLY our tram did not have any screaming and crying babies or kids. Beware that that’s possible as other reviewers have mentioned! We also enjoyed the walking trail on the premises. You can walk down below the visitor’s center to Little Sac River. There’s a nice boardwalk along the water and it’s peaceful.

THE BAD: Overall, the experience was lame. It did not hold up to my expectations. We came on a Thursday afternoon and surprisingly they were busy. I was under the impression that you rode in the back of the “Jeeps”. Turns out they cram you onto a tram trailer that’s pulled by a Go-kart made to look like a Jeep. When I say cram, you are literally shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee with the other passengers. I could smell the stench of the people next to me, gross. Due to this and also due to the seats facing inward you are straining your neck to turn and see everything. It’s hard to take photos without peoples heads in them, too. It’s also difficult to see most of the points of interest because you are sitting down, other passengers are in the way, and you’re constantly on the move. Because of all this I don’t feel it was worth the price. Honestly, I don’t see the point of the trams other than it makes for a shorter tour and I feel they do the trams just to be different from other tourist caves in the area. A walking tour would have been a much...