Revisiting somewhere you knew from childhood is often a disappointment, in that it's usually changed in some way; and that it's now smaller than how you remember it, for obvious reasons. I remember my school assembly hall as seeming vast; recently I went back there, and it's not that big at all.
I had a happier occasion recently though, when I visited a house I'd stayed in as a child thirty-six years before, and it was mostly how I'd remembered it, and was warmly nostalgic.
As for more about TV not being as it seems, here's one about the now-axed Jeremy Kyle show (which I have never really watched). The producers would deliberately lie to the guests about the time they were on, so they thought they'd have plenty of time to get glammed up for the cameras. Then they'd burst in hours earlier, saying "you're on NOW", so that the guests had to go on as they were, still in their casual clothes, with no make up, and looking every bit how Daily Mail readers would expect them to look.
@oldmanandtheangel The Isle of Wight does not have white sand; it has beautiful coloured sand! I didn't believe that until I went there.