While riding the Boston subway, I struck up a conversation with a tourist who appeared lost. After telling them how to get to the U.S.S. Constitution, they told me about their visit to Plymouth Rock and how it was a waste of time. (It’s not like Devil’s Tower, it’s just a rock that would fit in a pickup truck) It got me to wondering, what item/locale/event have you owned/visited that did not live up to your expectations and you wish you had saved your money/time.
Manhattan, NY - underwhelmed.
Tokyo - underwhelmed.
Golden Gate Bridge - underwhelmed.
The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen. It’s way out in a crappy area on the far edge of town and it’s just a dumb little statue and it’s surrounded by idiot tourists hanging off the shore’s edge trying to get a non-boring picture of it. Skip with extreme prejudice.
I went there last year and was so underwhelmed lol.
Along with the Manneken Piss statue in Brussels. A real dud.
Every single time the Washington Wizards take the court.
The White House “tour.” For all the hassle required, it’s one of the biggest wastes of time for tourists in all of DC.
The Four Corners Monument where you can stand at the meeting place of four arbitrary lines. Wow!
The Mall of America. It was big, but it wasn’t that big. Much of what makes it large is the theme park in the center, but minus that, it’s not that much larger than other malls I’ve been to.
Heh, I like the Manneken Pis. It’s such a weird, goofy little thing for a big city to build its tourism identity around.
LOL I thought it would be a little bigger!
Beyond which, it has 2, 3, or even 4 copies of the same generic mall retail stores you have in your hometown. It might have WAG 300 storefronts, but only 100 distinct stores. So not much different than the suburban large mall in/near most burbs.
When you’ve already walked past the third Auntie Anne’s pretzels or Eagle Outfitters or Spencers, the fourth one holds no great allure.
Hawaii in general. Went to three islands. The private helicopter tour with just the pilot and my wife and I was fun though.
The rest was ‘meh’ to me. Spending that kind of money, I would rather immerse myself in a different culture.
Hawaii was on my wife’s bucket list.
I agree with all of the above, with the possible exception of Manneken Pis. I wasn’t impressed, but it was amusing.
Underwhelmed by Hard Rock Cafe in London. Loud music and mediocre food.
Boulangerie Poilane in Paris. My wife slogged us around for an hour looking for this damn place so she could see the famous chandelier made out of bread. Even less than underwhelming, rather a complete “meh”.
I love Hawaii. We usually go to Kauai and spend our time hiking and birdwatching.
I’m underwhemed by most television and movies, as well as best-selling books.
Fortunately, I was warned about how little and obscurely placed the Mannekin Piss was before I saw it. Are there still lots of little stalls/shops along the way selling things like Mannekin Piss corkscrews? That was weird. In some ways more entertaining than the stature that inspired them.
Yes they had some for sale. Definitely weird. I did not buy one lol.
I met some friends from Amsterdam and they took me all around Brussels one day. I would never have found that location on my own.
Yes. And it is a different culture if you avoid touristy things and places.
Yeah, sure. I think we always ended up surrounded by mainland tourists.
Often, in other places, my wife and I just take off by our own. Bicycles in Munich for example.
Huh, I love Hawaii, and want to go back. The Big Island felt like enough of a different culture to me that I kept being surprised the temperatures were in Fahrenheit. Volcano National Park was the bomb. Hiking near it, and wandering through about 10 different biomes in one day’s hike was amazing. And Kauai is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. The snorkeling was fun, too.
I saw the manneken pis when I was ~15. I thought it was amusing. I still remember it now, many years later, so I can’t call it underwhelming.
I saw Plymouth Rock as a kid and have absolutely no recollection of what it looked like. “Just a rock” matches what I can remember, though. Yeah, I’d skip that one.
No one’s said Mona Lisa yet? I can’t believe I lined up for that. Seen better (and way bigger) art at every local farmer’s market 
Beautiful detail and glow on the original. Go to the Louvre when they open and run to the Mona Lisa so you can beat the crowd and actually get to look at it rather than being shuffled past in a mob.
Native honeycreepers and native forest birds generally are almost gone on Kauai 
. Just hanging on by their fingernails in that small refugium in the mountains - last time I was there I didn’t see a single one (it was very foggy the one day we went into the highlands, but I didn’t hear any either). Even on Maui and the Big Island it’s been a tale of steep decline these last few years. Climate change has opened the door to avian malaria everywhere and populations are dropping precipitously. Eight species were declared extinct last year (four on Kauai, three on Maui, one on Molokai - though these have probably all been gone for decades).
I do like seeing all the introduced exotics and of course cosmopolitan seabirds and some endemic subspecies of more cosmopolitan species are holding up a little better. But in general I find the whole thing pretty depressing. I probably should take another trip there before everything is gone.