Ladies, gentlemens and none of the aboves, please allow me to regale you with the story of the MARS club and the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

We decided to take a trip to Niagara falls as a fun little day for tourist attractions and money spending. Since all four of us were enraptured by the novelty of the Rainforest Cafe, we decided to go there for dinner.

Six pm comes and we decide it's time to eat. since it was just a random Saturday, we though it would have been fine not having a reservation and even if there was a bit of a wait we could just kill time in the quaint little gift shop. As the defacto leader of the MARS Club in that moment, I had approached the hostess stand

We wait.

There are two employees, standing around and chatting, occasionally writing things down. I am too anxious to speak up, but eventually they see me and ask if I have a reservation. I do not. "Okay, it's about fifteen minutes wait, is that okay?" I respond that it is. They take my name and phone number, and say that they will send me a text when our table is ready. I receive the confirmation text message saying that I've been added to the wait list, and think "great! Now I just need to wait for Navi to scream 'hey! Listen!' as my designated text message notification tone."

We wait.

I circle the gift shop three times, cheering when I see my name written on tacky magnets and mugs and balking when I see the dreaded "Sophia" on products I might actually like. Eventually the entire MARS club finds ourselves staring at the fish tank to observe all of the fancy fish they have on display. We begin to question how long it has been.

It's only been twenty minutes, we figure they might just be behind a little bit but some are starting to question if we should eat somewhere else. The first utterance of "sunk cost" is made. We continue to watch the fish tank.

Soon thirty five minutes pass from the initial walk in time. We wonder if maybe they had forgotten about us. We question again if it would be better to leave, but the sunk cost is mentioned once more. I go up to the hostess stand again and ask if our table might be ready. They ask for my name, and the remaining host begins anxiously leafing through post it notes looking for my name.

He tells me he is sorry, but he's lost the information. He offers us the table of another group that hadn't come forward to claim it yet, so we take the offer if anything just for a place to sit down.

We finally walk into the dining hall and discover it is practically empty. I can see three or so other tables that are currently occupied, which I find somewhat frustrating considering how long they made us wait. The corner we are sat in is dark but we're still able to look through the menus and chat. We notice these prices were much (much) higher than we expected, even knowing that this was a tourist trap restaurant but the sunk cost is invoked once more and we decide to continue.

We figure we'd just get fancy drinks for the souvenir cups, split an appetizer and maybe get a dessert. Even the appetizers are overpriced for what you get, but none of us would ever truly know.

it's been quite a while since we've been seated, but no one has come by to take our drink order. By examining my texts I am able to deduce we sat down fifteen minutes prior.

Once more the MARS Club debates leaving. Once more the sunk cost is reiterated.

And so we wait.

Another ten minutes pass and our decision has been made. We are hungry, discouraged, and haven't even seen a member of staff to flag down since we last took note of the long wait. So we finally decide the cost has been sunk, and leave to go to another restaurant outside of Clifton Hill this time.

Legend says the MARS Club would still be waiting had we decided to stay.

Cons: service slower than tar pitch. Prices that cannot possibly in any reality reflect on the quality of the food. The floors were sticky. Very unpleasant. I wish I could say more but I literally didn't experience anything else.

Pros: Got to see the elusive Eel in the fish tank twice. I called him Todd.