What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve read in a Trip Advisor review?

[peppermintgreengrass]

Currently on a lovely holiday. The Trip Advisor reviews of our resort are unrecognisable. Which has inspired me to ask: what’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve read in a Trip Advisor review?

Here are mine:

That the hotel had no private beach. When it wasn’t by the sea.

That the breakfast food was all cooked on request so you couldn’t see it before you ordered it. It was a tiny boutique hotel where they cooked you anything you wanted from an extensive menu so, no, it wasn’t a buffet.

That the kitchen area had a different worktop to the granite worktop shown in the photo. Because that definitely matters if you’re on holiday and not renovating your kitchen.

That it was hypocritical to promote fitness while simultaneously pushing junk food by - wait for it - selling ice creams beside an outdoor pool.

I swear I had to stop myself from giving a😄 reaction to every one of these posts.... they're hilarious!!

Not a review... but overhead from an American guest when I was working in a 15th century castle .... wondering why did they built the castle so close to the highway? Eh, I think the castle was there before the dual carriageway 🤔

I'm guessing the Pyramids at Giza?

I’m looking at hotels for a holiday quite soon.
So many are glowing but the first reviews and/ or they just list every single member of staff that they’ve come across.
I wish TA would ban them

A local dairy farm with an attached ice cream parlour, that's very popular - it makes lovely ice cream with milk from their own cows and people travel from miles around.

People complain they don't sell dairy free/vegan ice cream. They also complain that it smells of farm and it puts them off the ice cream.

It's a fucking dairy farm who's main business is making ice cream from the cows that produce the milk. Farms smell of farm, who knew?

I read one complaining that her husband felt humiliated having to drink his all inclusive beer in a small glass "like a child" instead of a pint glass! We still laugh about that one

Close. The Pyramids!

They booked 'Majorca' but were sent to 'Mallorca' !!! Ended with 'never heard of it' !

Lovely 5 star hotel in Turkey had loads of reviews saying that their children contracted salmonella and it was obviously from the food. Food was delicious and cooked perfectly. The salmonella was probably contracted from the hotels tortoises that roamed around that loads of kids touched. People need to do their research into animals!

By absolute favourite comment from a fantastic guest to her lovely friend (I was a rep)

"Oh those cliffs at Los Gigantes were beautiful. I wonder when they were built as they weren't here when I visited a few years ago ago"

Asks me

"Erm, I'm not sure but hundreds of thousand of years when I island was formed through a Volcanic eruption."

Managed to sell them a luxury jeep tour up Teide though 😉

To be fair - it’s not good there, to say the least. 😷😷😷😳😳

Hot tub needed a shelter as it was "unusable when raining"

This one about Chatsworth House from a Canadian man who doesn't seem to appreciate that it is a working country estate. It was so unreasonable that when I first read it I thought it must be somebody having a laugh. But no, there are really people this demanding.

baradine
North Vancouver, Canada
This place stinks, literally
Review of Chatsworth House
Reviewed 1 September 2006
Our July 30, 2006 visit to Chatsworth House: This place is best viewed from a distance (see photo) because it literally stinks. My wife and I had no idea what to expect. As we approached the property (see photo) we were looking forwared to visiting the House. After parking in the overflow lot, approximately 250 yards from the House, we got out of the car and immediatly could smell the animal feces that we observed all around our feet. We identified rabbit droppings, sheep dung, cow dung, dog poo, duck droppings and other various froms of feces on the ground. We did not see any horse excrement. We carefully stepped our way to the road, which was also littered with feces, and followed the road up to the House. The smell was very bad indeed. Our first stop was at the restaurant in the "Stable" building and suprisingly people were eating and managing to keep their food down. As we became more nauseous with the smell we went straight to the House entrance where the posted sign indicated a "donation" to tour the House. I enquired with the front desk and said we would like to tour the House but would not be making a "donation". I was informed that the entrace "fee" was compulsory, making me wonder what is their definition of "donation". I asked why the grounds are not kept clean and the animals kept out of the grounds overnight, to which there was no answer. However the comment I received from the lady was "what do you expect for the country". Of course what I expect is a clean property for tourists; the animals can be kept elsewhere. The animals are not visible during the day so they must be pastured somewhere else. Throughout the rest of our holiday we did not encounter any other place as smelly as Chatsworth House. I cannot recommend anybody visit there unless they have a severe nasal cold and cannot smell anything.

Not for much longer (if what you say is true).

Fake reviews will be a banned practice from April.

And that includes cherry-picking.

50/50 on this. Yes, if you book a Disney Cruise you'd expect children, but offering adults only Disney cruises isn't a ridiculous suggestion. I know lots of adults who do Disney stuff without children, or with their adult DC.

At a quite basic coastal resort on the border of South Africa and Mozambique. A European family gave one star as one night a bat flew into their thatched chalet. Like the resort owners should have a meeting with all the bats to tell them not to go to number 12 please.

I should add that the chalet was the top accommodation, as I said it's basic. So tents and caravans are the norm.

They are lucky they only had a bat visit. We had a green mamba in the tree outside our spot.😂
I think this might have just finished them off.

were they expecting the hanging gardens of Babylon or herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically past the walls?

Not TA, but people I've met on holiday.

In Marrakesh, a Scottish woman was "shocked there are so many Moroccan men, I wasn't expecting that, you know what they are like". Also complained that none of the hotel staff seemed to fancy her.

In the Aya Sophia, two women loudly complaining that "the ceiling could really do with a lick of paint" and went on about how they would renovate it if they were given the chance.

"Too much foreign food" in Torremolinos. Despite the fact that every other bar was a British one.

In Tunisia (despite warnings in the travel brochure that the apartments were beside a mosque) one family used to shout "keep the noise down!" for the duration of the call to prayer, and think this was hilarious.

A review of the Grand Canyon North Rim rustic cabins complained that there was too much wildlife, and they were appalled that a ground squirrel almost entered their cabin. I don’t think that was a joke review either.

Working at a Norman Castle built in the 11th century, we had more than one complaint that there wasn't a lift.

oh i wish i could find it now... we used to go back to the same hotel, year after year for a while because we enjoyed it so much, and someone posted on trip advisor that their holiday to spain was ruined because no one told them there were fish in the sea!!

Here’s the brilliant Ben Nevis review that people have referenced

Loving this thread...

One poster just reminded me of arriving in the Dominican Republic, plane landed and the dark clouds were rolling in. By the time we got out of the airport the rain was lashing down, and I heard a British tourist say "Well I don't mind so much if it rains now and gets it over with provided it is dry for the rest of the holiday". I did have to lean over and say "You do know it's the rainy season, don't you?". It really was and they really didn't.

Might be an urban myth but apparently someone only awarded the Lake District four stars on Trip Advisor. This makes me laugh 🤪

What sort of people are they? I think you can be quite discerning when reading reviews and I find it quite easy to filter out the ones that are complaining about daft things, the ones who have probably been asked to leave a good review with a free drink or something ( seen a few hotels with lots of first time reviewers) or the ones written by the establishment itself (I am talking about you dodgy Egyptian hotel where all your good reviews had the exact same spelling mistake)

I often leave Trip Advisor reviews and am always fair and balanced. Equally, if I abide by the above, Trip Advisor has found me some lovely places and stopped me making awful mistakes too.

I always read trip advisor reviews when we’re planning on spending our money staying somewhere, be it for overnight or longer. I’ve pretty much learned how to discard the more ridiculous reviews that are so picky or plain stupid, although I realise that reviews are subjective, or at least should be. I also read reviews on restaurants that we’re thinking of going to for the first time for the same reason. I’ve also learned to generally disregard those which give 1 out of 5 (for example) when the vast majority are 4/5 out of 5, or vice versa.

I also leave reviews on TA and try to be very balanced in what I write. So if the food is good but the service was a bit lacking, I’ll say so.

I will say I’ve never been offered any kind of incentive to give a positive review, nor would I accept one if offered.