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15 of the Most Hilarious (and Insane) TripAdvisor Reviews of All Time, Ever

See recent posts by David Landsel

With more than 200 million traveler reviews and counting, TripAdvisor is more vibrant than ever these days, offering up a continuous stream of new hotel, restaurant and attraction reviews from Anchorage to Auckland and nearly everywhere in between.

But the site isn't just useful for those trying to book trips to unknown locations. It's also – somewhat secretly – a terrific source of entertainment. From hilarious one-star reviews of the Taj Mahal to hair-raising tales of woe from one-star hotels the site's users experienced so we don't have to, here are some of the most unexpected, hilarious (or just plain hair-raising) TripAdvisor reviews of all time.

1. The British Museum had lost its charm…

Seriously, Rosetta Stone. When you just lie there like that, it's really hard for people to get excited.

2. Do we need to review the definition of the word "park" one more time?

This guy just flat out didn't care for Central Park. Not to be know-it-alls, but a quick search for "Central Park Helicopter Tour" returns upwards of 6 million results, #justsaying.

3. Happiest place on earth, indeed.

So not appropriate in the workplace, Goofy! This Swiss visitor to the Magic Kingdom has not-so-fond memories of her visit to Disney's Magic Kingdom in Orlando. (And did she really mean to say she "bared" it? Or was something lost in translation?) Also – does anyone remember which Epcot buffet might have been doing lasagna in the 1980s, so we can go back in time and not eat it?

4. Hi, have you met Las Vegas? She's fun, but kind of loud.

Dancing! Music! In Las Vegas? What are the, errr, odds? The TripAdvisor pages for Las Vegas hotels are riddled with reviews like this one from the Wynn resort. It really doesn't matter what hotels promise or how many stars they've been awarded. The fact is, if you're in Las Vegas looking for a night of uninterrupted sleep, you're better off avoiding the Strip, particularly on a weekend.

5. Can you imagine the waiters at Peter Luger clapping their hands and singing "Happy Birthday" to tourists from Indiana? Us neither.

This poor visitor from the heartland wasn't pleased with the complimentary birthday offerings (of which there are none) at one of the most notoriously brusque restaurants in New York City – Peter Luger in Brooklyn. And then there's the trauma of experiencing steak being served…correctly…in a steakhouse…. We just can't.

6. Soooo…kind of like how the Pyramids are just pyramids?

But it all started out so well! Seriously – we're terribly sorry that you found one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world to be a little crowded. Wonder what this user's take would be on Times Square.

7. I'm sure Anne Frank found it claustrophobic as well, dear.

Let's see – house museum where girl hid in wall to escape detection by the Nazis makes visitor feel "claustrofobic." Have we got that right? Can't make this stuff up!

8. Hey, Taj Mahal! BE MORE IMPRESSIVE.

A shame, really, when a wonder of the world doesn't live up to the expectations of the odd tourist visiting from overseas. Also, like many visitors, this user found the location of the Taj rather distasteful, as if it was the Taj's fault that the city of Agra might have seen better days. This review left out one of our other favorite gripes about the Taj: That the inside is dark, creepy and somewhat less grand than the exterior would suggest. Befitting of a mausoleum, perhaps?

9. At least the water wasn't too watery?

This gentleman is clearly a fan of handing out compliment sandwiches, though to be fair, he may be a little murky on what the whole beach experience entails. Keep being you, beautiful beach in Guam we'd like to visit some day – even if you are too sandy.

10. You know how in France, the French people refuse to stop speaking French? Rude .

First of all, random Australian person? Best. Title. Ever. Second of all, it's not everyone in Paris' job to cater to your inability to speak a lick of French. Lastly: It's actually not poorly organized. The queues are quite well marked. No language skills required. Perhaps a sit down with your ophthalmologist is in order?

11. The Hilarious Hotel Manager and The Case of the Missing Toilet

Sometimes, the best response to a bad review is humor – and lots of it. One hotel manager in Scotland became a minor celebrity for his stinging rebuke to this off-handed review left by some visitors from Dubai. Read the complete response – complete with hilarious twist near the end – here .

12. Any one looking to bring home scabies from their next South Beach vacation? This user can recommend the perfect place.

With just one and a half stars and dozens of hair-raising reviews, it's a miracle that the Boulevard Hotel on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach manages to stay in business. It's a safe bet that its customers aren't reading reviews like this one. As the user suggests, it may be best left to those a) committing murder/suicides, b) manufacturing and/or doing illegal drugs or c) looking to catch communicable diseases.

13. The dinner comes to $800 a head, but we'll throw in generous portions of condescension (with a side of crazy) for free – how's that sound?

A server at the venerable French Laundry in the Napa Valley allegedly seems to have had it out for this girlfriend getaway group from Southern California. Their apparent mistake? Being entirely too enthusiastic about their once-in-a-lifetime dinner at one of the world's most talked-about restaurants. If true, this is…this is just sad.

14. His name was Basil and the hotel was Fawlty Towers, but your point is well taken.

Normally, we'd be inclined to take a review like this one with a coarse grain of  artisanal sea salt, but then again, the Georgian House hotel in Glasgow, Scotland has in the past been somewhat of a shenanigans magnet. After all, a manager here was let go last year for leaving angry replies to reviews from less than happy guests, of which there appear to be quite a few. At the very least, these poor travelers had some experience with the great outdoors, having just come from hiking in the Highlands. Hope the park bench was at least somewhat comfortable.

15. Hot pics, but kind of an uggo in person, y'know?

Wait – what? Is this guy serious? Who drives into Yosemite National Park and isn't completely floored by the beauty of their surroundings? Even after a four-hour drive? This user from Phoenix, visiting back in 2013. Hopefully, by now, they've seen a shrink about getting that fixed. Whatever that is.

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12 Absurdly Bad TripAdvisor Reviews

TripAdvisor serves as the Internet's top resource for reviews on travel destinations, but occasionally, their reviewers appear to be on a different type of trip. This photo gallery is dedicated to funny TripAdvisor reviews and people who took the high road with their critique of the  top travel destinations in the world . Sure, comical  Yelp reviews  are great, but they're nothing compared to funny travel reviews where people call the Grand Canyon "overrated" and claim that a beach was "too sandy." Peruse this collection of weird TripAdvisor reviews and funny travel complaints from people who are probably better off staying home for their next vacation.

Just Poo It

Beware Of Building

No Beetles Either

This Just In: Beaches Are Sandy

Museum Of Weiners

The Long Wall Of China

Get Out Of Hair

The Haunting

Ron Swanson's Review Of Big Ben

Not So Happy Hour

No Redeeming Qualities

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Travel | July 15, 2021

Ridiculous Reviews of Some of the Best National Parks

A new book combines illustrations of the parks with laughably bad critiques from disgruntled tourists

Jennifer Billock

Travel Correspondent

Environmental activist and author Edward Abbey spent two seasons, in 1956 and 1957, working as a ranger in what's now Arches National Park in Utah. In Desert Solitaire , his account of those two summers, Abbey writes, "Standing there, gaping at this monstrous and inhumane spectacle of rock and cloud and space, I feel a ridiculous greed and possessiveness come over me. I want to know it all, possess it all, embrace the entire scene intimately, deeply, totally...."

While most can't compete with Abbey's eloquence, I'd venture to guess that the majority of the 1.5 million annual visitors to the red-rock paradise have something to say about the park's magnificence and beauty.

And it's not necessarily something so nice. Well, at least for one person, who left this scathing review: “Looks nothing like the license plate.” Of course, referring to the standard issue plate featuring Delicate Arch, a 46-foot-tall freestanding sandstone arch, and the state slogan, "Life elevated."

It's bitter reviews like this one that illustrator Amber Share savors. She runs the Instagram account Subpar Parks , which pairs illustrations of national parks with the ridiculously unsavory reviews they’ve received online. The account, launched in 2019, currently has more than 100 posts of artistically drawn national park posters superimposed with real negative reviews she's gathered from Yelp, Google and TripAdvisor. The popular Instagram account has spawned a new book, Subpar Parks: America's Most Extraordinary National Parks and Their Least Impressed Visitors , out this month.

Subpar Parks: America's Most Extraordinary National Parks and Their Least Impressed Visitors

Based on the wildly popular Instagram account, Subpar Parks features both the greatest hits and brand-new content, all celebrating the incredible beauty and variety of America’s national parks juxtaposed with the clueless and hilarious one-star reviews posted by visitors.

“At the time [I created the account], I was working more in graphic design and I wanted a side project to keep me illustrating and hopefully break into the outdoor industry a bit,” Share says. “A natural idea that emerged was drawing all the parks. Obviously, that’s been done a lot and executed really well by a lot of really awesome artists. So I thought, ‘What could I do to put my spin on it and make it my own, stand out a little bit?’ One day I just happened to stumble upon a couple of bad reviews someone posted to Reddit, and immediately thought I could find this for every park.”

The first park she illustrated for the Instagram account was Arches and its non-license-plate-worthy scenery. Once she put up a few more and shared the account, the project took off. With more than 350,000 followers, the account has been called " an immediate hit ," taking " creativity to a whole new level " and providing " comic relief in strange times ." Soon enough, literary agents were sliding into Share's DMs to get her to create a book with them.

Out of all the National Park Service’s 423 national park sites , only 63 of them have the “National Park” designation tacked onto their name. From Acadia to the Grand Canyon, and Denali to the Virgin Islands, all 63 are featured in the book. Share also includes a handful of national monuments, recreation areas, preserves, lakeshores and seashores, bumping the full list of sites in its pages up to 77. A nature lover who enjoys hiking, kayaking and backpacking, Share has been to about a third of the sites.

The Raleigh, North Carolina-based designer had some strict criteria when it came to determining which reviews to use in her illustrations. She looked for reviews that predated the project; once it took off, people began to plant fake reviews to get her attention. Then, she tried to weed out any sarcastic ones, and others that criticized park management or administration.

“I really try to focus in on people just criticizing nature because that, to me, is what keeps it funny and light,” she says. “You could go on all day about the ways that Zion manages the shuttle system, and that’s not really what this is about. But somebody who thinks the scenery of Zion is distant and impersonal is really what gets me.”

As for the glass-half-empty people that wrote the reviews, Share hasn’t heard from any, and doesn’t try to contact them either. “I just don’t really see that as a productive avenue,” she says. “I imagine most people probably don’t even remember that they wrote the review that I pulled. If you think about the mindset you’re in when you just quickly pen a little review, you probably don’t really remember it after a while.”

No matter what the critics say, these six national parks, all in the book, are particularly impressive.

Acadia National Park, Maine

Maine’s 47,000-acre Acadia National Park , the first national park east of the Mississippi, opened to the public in 1919. Contained within the coastline cliffs and beaches is the 1,529-foot-tall Cadillac Mountain . There's also wildlife like black bears, moose and, just off the coast, finback, humpback and minke whales. Mount Desert Island, making up most of the park, is crisscrossed with hiking trails and scenic roadways.

“I’ve never seen a beach like the beaches on Acadia,” Share says. “The rugged, sort of rocky, pine tree evergreen coastline blew my mind. I went and saw the sunrise on Cadillac Mountain, and it was a spiritual experience.”

That being said, the review—"The water is ice cold"—isn’t wrong. The waters off of Acadia have a chilly reputation, only getting up to about 60 degrees in the summertime. Share experienced this herself. “The water was pretty cold, I will say," she says. "I dipped my feet in and was like, ‘This isn’t that bad, but I would not put my whole body in it.’" Someone responded ​[to her comment] with, "That should just be the slogan for all of Maine’s beaches," she adds.

Everglades National Park, Florida

Everglades National Park in Florida stretches 1.5 million acres, protecting nine different wilderness habitats including mangrove, freshwater slough and estuary. It’s a unique park overall; when it was created in 1934, it was the first wilderness area to be protected for the diversity of its flora and fauna.

“I can kind of see how if you’re just looking superficially at the marshy grasses going on forever, it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’” Share says. “But there’s just so much in there that to call it ‘miles and miles of nothing’ is just so, so comical to me.”

Beneath the surface of those miles of "nothing," as one reviewer so blithely put it, are endemic species (like the saw palmetto plant and the snail kite bird ), crocodiles, manatees, fish, and more. Above the "nothing," you’ll see panthers, some 360 species of birds and more than 100 miles of waterway to explore by boat. But you have to look beyond the initial view.

“The ranger spoke so beautifully,” says Share, recalling an interview she did for the book. “She was saying how a lot of parks out west are parks that scream at you, and you get why they are national parks immediately. But she told me that Everglades is a park that whispers. Doesn’t that just give you the chills? It’s one of those that you really have to sit with and take the time to let it seep in.”

Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska

The indigenous Tlingit people in Alaska have a term for the noise that comes from Glacier Bay : white thunder. It refers to the sound of glaciers calving off into the water. Located in southeast Alaska just below the Tongass National Forest and west of Juneau, Glacier Bay has the world’s largest concentration of tidewater glaciers that are actively calving. And when it happens, you can both hear it and see it—often from the deck of what feels like a toy boat pluncked down in enormous scenery.

The review Share found—"Not great"—was especially curt. “It’s such a stunning and mind-blowing place,” she says.

The park, which is only accessible by plane or boat followed by a quick drive into Bartlett Cove, ​ opened in 1925 and was expanded in 1978. Today, it encompasses 3.3 million acres chock full of fjords, rainforest, coastline, mountains and those colossal glaciers. You can also catch a glimpse of humpback whales, puffins, sea lions and sea otters. Share says the best way to explore the park for a beginner is on one of the eight-hour boat tours offered by the Glacier Bay Lodge.

Haleakala National Park, Hawaii

When Share was 10 years old, she lived in Hawaii while her dad served in the Navy. During that year, her family enjoyed the stunning overlooks along Maui's 52-mile Road to Hana, also known as the Hana Highway, that leads to Haleakala National Park .

Established in 1976, the 33,265-acre park is split into two sections: the Summit District and the Kipahulu District. The Summit District is home to the park’s namesake volcano—with an elevation of more than 10,000 feet. “I remember freezing,” Share says. “I was so cold up on [Haleakala]. You don’t really think of Hawaii as a place with super high elevation.” The Kipahulu District encompasses the rest of the park and all its wild green landscapes, endemic species (native bats, seals and sea turtles), ocean views and waterfalls.

Haleakala is the world's largest dormant volcano , and its summit is considered the quietest place on Earth . Plus, Haleakala has the largest concentration of endangered species of all the national parks. So the review Share found—"Pretty average experience"—really stuck out.

“What people also don’t realize is how Haleakala is not just the top of a volcano,” says Share. “There’s the entire other district. So it’s really funny to me to call it a ‘pretty average experience’ when there are a lot of different things you could do there, and it’s also one-of-a-kind landscapes that you can’t get anywhere else.”

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado is truly a magnificent place. At 7,800 feet to 12,183 feet in elevation, it’s one of the highest national parks in the country, and it boasts the highest continuously paved U.S. highway, Trail Ridge Road. The 415-square-mile park contains 77 mountain peaks, hundreds of wildlife species and more than 300 miles of trails. Plus, a third of the park is stunning alpine tundra, sitting above the line where trees can grow in Colorado, between 11,000 and 12,000 feet elevation.

“We drove from west to east, and we stopped to do a hike,” recalls Share, of a trip she took in June this year. “Even if you just do the drive, you wind up going from the very bottom elevations of the park up to the alpine area, so you’re just hitting all the different elevations that are available in the park to explore. You’re in wildflowers in one part of the park and there’s still, in other parts, snow drifts that are taller than me. It’s just such a varied experience.”

That's why she was shocked—and amused—by a review that said simply, "Super unimpressed."

Rocky Mountain National Park, which was established in 1915, is still recovering from the 2020 wildfire season, so check to see if your preferred hiking routes and activities are currently available. And remember, if you’re from a low elevation, be sure to drink a lot of water and listen to your body—the adjustment is more difficult than you think.

Zion National Park, Utah

At only 229 square miles, Zion National Park in Utah is pretty small compared to some of the other national parks, but it is one of the most crowded. Drivable from a number of urban areas, and all over Instagram, it pulls first-time national park visitors out to see the sights. Those sights include the 15-mile-long, 3,000-feet-deep Zion Canyon; the Zion-Mount Carmel Highway with its switchback roads and scenic sweeping views that catch waterfalls in the right season; and 1,500-year-old Anasazi cliff dwellings and petroglyphs. Human history in the park dates back more than 10,000 years, though it was only established as a national park in 1919.

Share found this winning review of Zion: "Scenery is distant and impersonal."

“This is the park most people have on their bucket list cause they’ve seen Angels Landing on Instagram,” Share says. “It’s not this huge expansive park the way that Yellowstone or Yosemite are, so [the review is] even funnier to me because I’m like, ‘The scenery of Zion is not actually that distant cause Zion’s not even that big.’ You can do a hike like Observation Point or Angels Landing, where you have these wide open vistas of all of these incredible cliffs, but then you can also do something like The Narrows , where the rocks are literally up in your face while you navigate the narrow canyon.”

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Jennifer Billock | | READ MORE

Jennifer Billock is an award-winning writer, bestselling author, and editor. She is currently dreaming of an around-the-world trip with her Boston terrier. Check out her website at jenniferbillock.com .

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