To ask what tourist sites you’ve visited that met or exceeded expectations?

I don't know, how pleasantly surprised can you be by Disneyland? Don't get me wrong, I thought it was fine but I wasn't exactly cloaked in wondrous awe as I set eyes on it

The Taj Mahal was incredible and so worth the journey

I’ve been very lucky to visit many wonderful places and have always researched very carefully but there are definitely some which exceeded my expectations.

Agree with….

Yosemite
Grand Canyon (also agree with a pp that Bryce is breathtaking too)
Niagara Falls (fabulous view from the Embassy Suites Hotel)
Moriane Lake (better than Lake Louise, in my opinion)
Sagrada Familia
Terracotta Warriors
Beijing – Forbidden City and Summer Palace
Chateau de Chenonceau
Bayeux Tapestry (coming to the British Museum Sept 2026 – July 2027)
Carnac and other similar sites in Brittany

Don’t think these have been mentioned…..

Monet’s Garden
Les Machines de l’île, Nantes
Le Palais Idéal du Facteur Cheval, Hauterives, France
Cirque de Gavarnie, Haut-Pyrenees
742 through Kananaskis Country (Brokeback Mountain)
Baelo Claudia (Ancient Roman town in SW Spain)
Las Vegas strip – tacky but worth the long evening walk to see the sights, especially the Bellagio fountains,
Antelope Canyon, Arizona
Arches National Park, Utah
Durango – Silverton Railroad – husband’s choice but I loved it.
Colorado National Monument (fabulous rock formations)
Yellowstone NP (scenery, hot springs, rivers and waterfalls, and animals)
Zion National Park
Nine Mile Canyon, Utah (Petroglyphs)
Goblin Valley State Park -we only visited because all the National Parks were closed due to the Federal Govt shutdown in 2013.
New Zealand – everywhere we went exceeded expectations.

Palmyra in Syria before it was destroyed. It was incredible - absolutely magnificent ruins and we were virtually the only people there when we went. All we could see for miles and miles was unspoiled deserts. Now I believe it’s covered in landmines and the lovely guy who looked after the place was executed by IS😢. Feel so grateful to have had the opportunity to go.

Other than that, the Empire State Building. Worth the money, especially at sunset.

Perhaps because the poster read the OP to say where places had gone beyond expectations (as I did) and she’d had low expectations of Disneyland Paris so was pleasantly surprised ?

Stumbling across the amphitheatre in Pompeii. Just me and then DH, in a massive space.

Verona amphitheatre.

Olympia, running its short track.

The Pantheon in Rome, the Pantheon in Paris (very different buildings).

The Paris Catacombs.

The Corpus Clock in Cambridge.

The Radcliffe Camera in Oxford.

Anne Frank’s House and Our Lord in the Attic Museum in Amsterdam.

On a boat, emerging from fog across the lagoon in Venice in winter.

The Elgin and Winter Garden stacked theatres in Toronto.

The old courts in the Old Bailey.

The Hall of the Livery Company of Stationers in London.

Too many.

You do know it was flattened in WW2 don't you? It was beautiful before then but sadly unlike German cities it wasn't rebuilt brick by brick. Quite an offensive remark about a city that was destroyed in WW2 due to its engineering heritage. And no I'm not from Coventry.

Venice without a doubt, my favourite place on the planet.
The Imperial Palace and Summer Palace in Beijing.
Pretty much the whole of Luxor, apart from the shakedown by tourist police in the Valley of the kings 🙄
Landing by helicopter on the Mt. Cook glacier in NZ was unforgettable, as was Hobbiton on North Island - the attention to detail was amazing, can’t believe we sat and had a drink in the Green Dragon.

Biggest disappointments were Giza, the Pyramids were a literal shit-hole with the minor ones used as toilets by the locals and the bull pits were full of rubbish. The Sphinx was like a gypsy market on the viewing walkway.
Also Chitchen Itza in Mexico, for similar reasons, it felt very unsafe with people grabbing you.

We’ve just come back from British Columbia. Spent a week in Vancouver and a week in Whistler. It was stunning. I thought it would be beautiful but we fell in love with it. Vancouver was fantastic.

I always wanted to see St Basils cathedral in Moscow. It was everything I expected it to be.

I haven’t been yet, but when in Cairo Museum some 30 years ago (early in the day and in the first week of January) DH and I had Tut’s death mask all to ourselves.
I had been a big “fan” of Ancient Egypt since childhood, and had a picture of it on my wall!
I may have had a sob.
Loved the sphinx and pyramids too.

Also loved the Medina in Marrakesh: utterly bonkers, beautiful and with such contrasts.

What we need is someone with far too much time on their hands to put all these ideas on a spreadsheet, so we can choose to sort by Country, or by 'type' such as Cathedral / Basilica or 'Artwork' or 'Load of old stones' or 'Sad / Moving but a must see' or 'nature' or whatever

I'm adding this to my 'watch list' but would love to be able to filter to those I realistically might see and those I'm never going to get to.

It really is, would love to go back

Loved walking around Rome just taking it all in.

A bit parochial compared to some of the answers here, but Exmoor blew me away. So quiet and unspoilt and of course stunningly beautiful.

The rockies. Huge. Like nothing you can imagine. Stunningly beautiful. Moraine lake. Maligne lake. The hike to St Agnes teahouse and mirror lake. Sunshine meadows hike on a sunny day just us and a guide. We had it to ourselves.
Also love pompei. It was pretty spectacular. We went in May before the busier season.

Ellis Island, NYC. The exhibition was fantastic.
Canterbury Cathedral - £5 tour. Awesome.
Angkor Wat - just go and roam.

Thought of another one - much closer to home, and FREE (you pay to park).

The National Memorial Arboretum in Staffs. Well worth a visit if you haven't been.
I would definitely splash out for a guide book, or book a guide though, there is so much though that has gone into the placement of the memorials, from the 'Shot at Dawn' one, position where the sun rises, to the main one where the sun shines through the gap at 11am on 11th November. You'll walk miles and miles, but well worth it.

No, I get you. I haven't actually been, but from pictures the cathedral is staggering.

I got there and it's crazy. Not sure how much they've excavated now but when I went in 2016 we had to trek for 3 days to get to it and the archeologists allowed us under the tarp to watch what they were exposing and how they work and it was unlike anything I've ever seen. The archeologists used to get a helicopter in to the site. Back then the trek was also dangerous and really basic and one of our pack donkeys ate a poisoned caterpillar and died. It was a very unusual trip!

Agree. It's quite overwhelmingly gorgeous.

Yes stunning. One of the best places I've seen

Pretty well everything in Iceland. I had 3 nights there on an Iceland Air package. It included 2 coach tours - one of the Golden Circle and another Northern Lights tour. I normally avoid coach tours like the plague. However, they were absolutely fantastic. The guides were incredible knowledgeable and fun and of course Iceland is incredibly beautiful. We were also very lucky with the weather - we had wall-to-wall sunshine in early March. It was very cold and there was snow everywhere. The locals were lovely and the food was amazing. We went mainly to cheaper restaurants that were aimed at backpackers and locals and they were all excellent and not too pricey.

Macchu Picchu is absolutely no. 1 on my bucket list 😊 As soon as my kids are old enough we are going to do the Inca Trail.

The most awesome place I’ve ever been is the Atacama Desert in Chile. Incredible place, really otherworldly.

Guernica is devastating in the flesh, isn't it. I couldn't look away, horrifying as it is.

My favourite part was finding all the little "A&H" crests which somehow survived the 'clean sweep' after Ann Boleyn's downfall. But the whole place is spectacular.