“Absolutely Horrible”: 42 Times People Wished They Could End Their Vacation Trip Early

Dubai.
Some of it wasn't bad but that was further away from the city. In the city people could be so horrible to workers and animals, the outskirts were depressing and dirty, and it just felt unglamorous/touristy. I've been more than once and it seems to get worse each time.

I wouldn't say it looked amazing, but Las Vegas is an incredibly depressing place if you aren't looking for a mall on steroids experience. Couldn't wait to leave.

Giza, Egypt.

Absolutely horrible. Every single person there is corrupt, every customs officer, tour guide, police, hotel clerk, etc.

The pyramids are crowded with tourists, and are extremely underwhelming— you can literally see a McDonald’s just a mile away.

I’m so glad we were only there for two days, and breathed a sigh of relief once we left.

Oh, and if you’re a woman, it’s 10x bad. You will be groped, hit on, propositioned, all the time.

Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, especially the Walk of Fame. It seems so glamorous in movies and photos, but up close it’s crowded, gritty and full of pushy vendors and costumed characters. Interesting to see once, but definitely not like the postcard version.

Broadway, Nashville. Incredibly tacky and touristy. AWFUL music in almost every bar. Bouncers trying to convince to come into their boring bar instead of others. No good food. It’s like the French quarter with bad cover bands no culture.

Many of the places listed here were awesome 20 years ago. Mass tourism, esp cruise ships, ruined them.

My unpopular answer- Yellowstone. We went in September, and it was still a mass of people. Which I could deal with, except they exhibited the WORST behavior...chasing wildlife, driving erratically, standing on the edge of the boiling water pits (can't remember what they're called). I found myself hoping some of these people would fall in.

Key West, no doubt.

Ugly, crowded, d**g-and-crime-filled city on an island.

Worse than that, inescapable third-rate acoustic-guitar-playing-Jimmy-Buffet-wannabes in every crappy bar serving the crappiest drinks that were ever crapped out anywhere ever.

Aruba. A nice little sunny Island that is ruined, and I do mean ruined, by the ridiculous amount of people trying to hawk you a timeshare. 


When we checked into our hotel, the receptionist invited us to a timeshare presentation.


Once we got to our bedroom our phone rang again it was an invitation to a time share presentation.


We went into town, there's people on street corners stopping you and trying to sell you a timeshare.


Got back to our hotel room at about 9 p.m, oh look someone at the door trying to sell us a timeshare. 


Going to a local restaurant for lunch, and the waiter pitches us a timeshare


The thing I found really nasty and quite intimidating to be honest was that a lot of the people on street corners would try and force you into a waiting vehicle so you could be whisked off somewhere to spend several hours having a time share presentation directed at you.


Oh yes and when we returned home a week or two later we got an information pack in the post from the hotel trying to sell us a timeshare.


It's a lovely place, but we found the constant pitching of timeshares completely ruined our experience.

The French Quarter of New Orleans.

The city itself is interesting and very pretty in places, but the FQ itself is very tatty and Disneyfied. Worth a visit, but only once.

The Mona Lisa at the Louvre, you have to wait in a long a*s line full of tourists only to get a few seconds to look at a (IMO) underwhelming portrait with people doing obnoxious selfies around you. There are way better paintings in that museum.

Bali, Indonesia. Absolutely garbage-riddled beaches, scammers and louts at every corner trying to rip you off, endless traffic, and exorbitant prices compared to the rest of Indonesia.

Oktoberfest. More specifically Munich 🍻

Now I’m not saying you won’t have a good time, it’s just if you want to go to a place like your state fairgrounds if you will, dressed in 200€ dirndls with a million other Americans singing Sweet Caroline with 30€ chicken or schnitzel getting s*******d with 15€ beers under a large tent with an oompa band ,and spending 20€ and an hour long wait to ride the Ferris wheel, go right ahead!!

However…

You’ll get a more authentic experience going to a small town Volksfest where ( it’s less crowded) you can meet local Germans, and spend half as much for a chicken, beer, and all the Ein Prosit 🎶 Sweet Caroline , “ Country Roads” and that Robbie Williams song “Angels” they all love to sing when they’re drunk. At half the price and less crowded. And way more fun.

The Alamo. You know how you always picture it in the middle of nowhere surrounded by sand, well it's not it's one block downtown San Antonio surrounded by high-rise buildings. But the Riverwalk in San Antonio is amazing.

Not what people traditionally think as a destination, but that's part of the shame as it really IS the destination.

Cruise ships.

They real you in with bait & switch prices and a promise to visit so many ports of call. But the price is listed as per person per day, and lacking in all the nickel and diming they will do. The time in port is so ridiculously short that you can't REALLY enjoy the location before it's time to race back to the ship so they don't leave you.

If you're not going on a cruise with the idea that the boat itself is the destination, your making a mistake.

I could go on & on, including the horrific labor practices & such, but that's enough. My wife has dragged me on two now, I'm not a big fan.

Times Square. Online it looks like the heartbeat of New York… in reality it’s just overpriced food, shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, and people trying to sell you knockoff selfies with Elmo.

Monaco is way too expensive for what it offers Tourists (heavily priced drinks and empty streets), feels more like a theme park than an actual country/city in the French Riviera.

Mount Rushmore. It is underwhelming. Way smaller than you would think when you look at all the pictures of it. You can see what the mountain would have looked like without the carvings and I just wish they would have left it alone. The rest of the area was great. Devil's tower isn't that far away and again way smaller than what the movies make it out to be but still crazy how those volcanic pillars just rise out of the ground and make the tower.

Zanzibar. It's beautiful, but horrendous and bitterly disappointing. The whole island has been ravaged by conglomerates making all inclusive resorts and utterly destroying the fabric of the society by making everyone so painfully dependent on tourism and catering to this imagined idea of what Zanzibar is.

Istanbul. I’d always wanted to go and see the historical buildings and take in the culture.

History has been completed erased from a large number of buildings, including the Hagia Sophia which was incredibly disappointing.

People were at best dismissive and mostly really f*****g rude - which is at odds to all the Turks I know in England who are mega friendly.

Bora Bora. It was very pretty and the water was amazing but going out on the island and seeing how the locals live is very depressing considering the amount of money the resorts bring in.