Part of the joy of travel is seeing really cool things. That's why we have
tourist attractions: to give us an incentive to travel the country and even the world.
Sadly, some
tourist attractions don't really live up to their own hype. And some are crappy enough to ruin your whole vacation. Here, then, are the most disappointing tourist attraction
1
Taj Mahal. Lovely architecture but the surrounding area is so full of heart-wrenching poverty that it completely destroyed any positive memory of the trip. Little kids hounding you for blocks to buy something while dragging their younger sibling around. It was emotionally brutal.
2
The Great Salt Lake. It stank and the shores were covered with mats of brine flies. I guess I was expecting Lake Michigan but saltier.
3
The main archaeology museum in Cairo. Almost everything in there has been reproduced so many times that it was disappointing. At least I visited during the Egyptian Revolution, so zero lines there and at the Pyramids.
4
The family and I drove (!!!) all the way from the Alabama coast to Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota only to encounter zero visibility due to heavy fog. I mean ZERO. Could barely see my relatives in front of my face. We went home and my father joked for the rest of his life that “Mt. Rushmore is a hoax. It’s not really there.”
5
The sponge museum in Tarpon Springs Florida.
6
The entirety of Myrtle Beach
7
Pisa, the city is a large tourist trap and the food is very disappointing compared to smaller villages and cities in Italy. It’s great for a 1-2hr stop while on the train but not much else from a tourist standpoint
8
The Alamo. It's completely surrounded by shopping districts and tourist traps that absolutely dwarf it.
9
Times Square. It's been Disneyfied to holy hell. Who the hell goes to NYC to eat at a KFC and then go to the NFL store? There's this saying that Times Square is the one part of Manhattan actual New Yorkers never go and I totally get why.
10
Wall Drug, South Dakota You'll see billboards for it the moment you drive into the state. And they're amazing things like a cowboy boxing a T-rex and it says "200 miles to wall drug!"So naturally, after seeing billboards for that long you're super amped. Then it's coffee for a nickel and a t-shirt shop. Cool.
11
Plymouth Rock was the dumbest f*cking thing I was ever taken on a school trip to see.
12
Touristy restaurants are almost always disappointing. "THE place to eat when you're in..."
13
The Skybridge at the Grand Canyon. It's a 2 hour, one-way, trip where it costs $60 a person to enter the reservation, then another $60 to enter the park, then another $50 for the Skybridge.
14
South of the Border in SC. 800 miles of billboards and advertisements leading up to an abandoned sh*thole!
15
Hollywood walk of fame. Bunch of scammers, homeless people, druggies, and random people trying to sell you their mixtapes and other random shit in the streets. And these mixtape/CD people literally shove the CD in your face as you’re walking. It’s so annoying. Oh and it’s crowded as hell, so you’re getting jostled and yelled at for getting into other people’s pictures. And it’s impossible for you to take your own pictures without getting bumped around. Or pickpocketed (happened to my cousin when we were visiting)
16
The Pyramids - not because they weren’t amazing, just because of the sheer volume of tourists clambering up them like ants. That’s the thing with these attractions. You always imagine them to be so stunning because they’re pictured without crowds, but when you get there and it’s crammed with thousands of people, it doesn’t feel like you imagine.
17
Roswell New Mexico. It was just a lame tourist trap area.
18
Los Angeles In general was a letdown. I mean it was cool to see some of the places. But the traffic was enough to put me off ever going back, unbelievable. The drive from LA to San Francisco, though (the coast road), was amazing.
19
Gold and Silver Pawn Shop, in Las Vegas (from Pawn Stars). It's basically just a souvenir store. The parts of the store featured in the TV show are all just sets, and they aren't accessible to the public. You walk into a dim room that feels like the storage room in the back, cement floor. They have a few jewel case counters with Rolexes and a few collectible coins. The rest of the store is Pawn Stars shirts and souvenirs.
20
The Mona Lisa. Now, The Louvre is amazing. However, seeing the Mona Lisa is disappointing. You go to a relatively narrow hallway, and there is a pane of glass 15 feet in front of the painting.
21
4 Corners Monument. It is the intersection of Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona. It's just a sidewalk and a gift shop. I guess I don't know what I was expecting, but it's about 5 seconds of fun
22
The Liberty Bell is surprisingly small, considering how they made it sound in elementary school. I waited in line for 45 mins to see an….average bell? With a small crack…?
23
There is some fun stuff to do in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg Tennessee so that those towns aren't a total wash... But 98% of the activities there are outright tourist traps that distract from the beauty and absolute splendor of the Smoky Mountain National Park. If you're in East Tennessee and are spending 80% of your time inside those tourist traps and not in the park itself.... you're doing it wrong.
24
Stonehenge. Literally drove past it and was like 'haha that looks like a lame version of Stonehenge' and dad was like 'that’s Stonehenge'.
25
Statue of Liberty. Did not move like in Ghostbusters and there was next to no paranormal activity. For real though, she is way smaller than I imagined
