Things that ought to be great, but are invariably disappointing....

[ClashCityRocker]

Baths with wine and candles.

The heat from the bath means the wine gets tepid rather quickly, and the candle light is never strong enough to read a book in. Also, submerging to rinse the soap off results in a tidal wave of water, putting out the candles and resulting in being sat in darkness. The scramble for the light switch usually involves knocking over the precariously perched wine glass or candle, resulting in wine and candle wax everywhere.

See also breakfast in bed.

It's not a great position to eat breakfast in, really, being half recumbent. I'm usually a wee bit sweaty, would rather get up and have a cigarette and always end up with toast crumbs on the sheets.

What things that sound lovely in principle are really not that great in practice?

anonevent Yes! Spanish hot chocolate is the best. I grew up in Spain - imagine my disappointments at what's called hot chocolate here! And made with water

Fruit teas, loving the hate. Raspberry tea, just why??? Smells amazing, tastes like dishwater.

Also sidge massively agree on sex in the shower. Disappointing, watery and sometimes even cold! Rubbish

Chocolate milkshake.
Always have an odd edge to the taste. Sometimes they're gritty.
Any "low fat" food that's really supposed to be high fat.
I so agree with the fruit and herbal teas. My mum had a bit of a fad of drinking them a while back. Smelt nice, tasted of dishwater. People kept asking me to try them when I was pregnant but I felt nauseous enough already to be bothered with that crap.
Fruit cake. It ought to be a moist mix of dried fruit and lovely spices. It's inevitably a dry, horribly flavoured mess. It then coats the roof of your mouth like cement and you end up picking bits out of your teeth for ages. Give me a good sponge with lots of proper icing any day!
Fairground rides.
Candy floss.

I agree with chocolate ice cream and Cadburys. Flakes are still ok though.

Going to the cinema. You have to sit through weeks of adverts and trailers, the place is full of teenagers talking and waving their phones around, you pay a fiver for a box of stale popcorn and then the film is shit anyway.

Marriage.

I agree about Lands End. We went there in the 70's before it turned into an overpriced theme park, and it was wild and lovely.
Also, I make my own fruit cake, and it's rich and sticky.

Getting the family out for a dog walk through the forest or down the beach. When I see others do it it looks fun, everyone chatting and having fun.

When I try the kids complain after 10 minutes that they’re tired and can we go home now and DP has walked off at high speed and is half a mile ahead of us already . It was even worse when the kids were little, they’d insist on taking scooters or dolls in Parma and I’d end up carrying it all after dc had fallen over into a puddle 5 minutes into the walk.

I have lovely long walks on my own instead, just me and the dog 🐶❤️

*dolls in Parma 😂😂 I corrected that to prams twice 🙄

Poncy cafes. I imagine myself sitting there sipping my locally sourced coffee and feeling relaxed, sophisticated and slightly cool. In reality the seats are uncomfortable vintage junk that probably harbour fleas and the feeling of being out of place in this hipster idyll is so overwhelming that relaxation is impossible.

Camomile tea. It smells nice. It promises a chilled out hippy dippy vibe that leaves you at peace with the world after one cup. In reality it smells like cat pee and probably tastes worse.

Those sachets of cheap cappachino. They never dissolve and at best are a claggy mess that stick to the bottom of the mug.

Picnics. Food angst ruining a perfectly good stroll / lounge about outdoors. You lug FAR too much food to a place where everyone else has lugged FAR too much food - FAR too much of which is chips and dips. All the food is piled into the centre of rugs, around the edges of which people perch uncomfortably, forced to grimly munch constantly because of the huge piles of guilty food directly in their line of vision. Wasps are blatantly trolling you. they're totally taking the piss. The pile of food has to get a bit smaller or honour will not be satisfied; no one is off the hook. Either there are 4 beers between 20 people trying to achieve some loaves and fishes deal; or there is, for once, plenty of booze but NOWHERE to piss. Fucking awful. I never want to lug food to the middle of a park again.

Food and drink festivals.

Expectation: lots of new and different foods, opportunities for tasting, a chance to see demonstrations by local chefs, cooking schools, coming home with bags of goodies to make dinner that night. Sunshine. Relaxing on hay bales and sampling local hand-pressed cider and nibbles.

Reality: a muddy field full of 'gourmet' burger/curry/pizza vans and tents full of overpriced crafts. Nowhere to get a decent cup of coffee and the food tent has alternating organic sausage, cheese, cupcake and gin stands. The celebrity chef is making something that looks suspiciously like a ready meal and any workshops are fully booked before the festival opens. It rains and you find yourself in a gazebo watching an Ed Sheeran tribute and feeding the kids chocolate brownie that works out at close to £87/kilo. Getting home to find you have gin and cheese for tea.

Theme parks.
We spent a small fortune on universal tickets in Orlando this summer. 2adults and 2 teens.
We went for 2hours and all wanted to leave.
Said we would go back within our holiday time but none of us could be bothered.
So we spent about £800 for 3 rides!!!

I've just reported this thread to mumsnet with the following comment:

"I agree with everything in this thread. Classics, please!"

Totally agree about the fruit tea, it smells so good, but tastes so bad!

There's a shop near me that does proper hot chocolate, they pour melted chocolate into the mug and top it up with hot milk, amazing!

ihatethecold universal studios is fab, but probably not the best park... But if you don't like theme parks, Orlando probably isn't the ideal holiday destination

I disagree re baths - baths have kept me sane over the years. Without my half an hour alone in the bath with a book in the evenings over the years I'm sure I would have lost my sanity. When I simultaneously had teenagers and toddlers it was the baths that kept me going.

Increasingly restaurants disappoint me. Something's always not quite right - the service or a pudding that looked better written down than the reality, or undercooked carrots, or something. I always leave a bit disgruntled these days.

Sunbathing on the grass with a book. Can't read properly because of the sun, the grass scratches your skin, bugs crawl all over you and you can't get into a comfy position to read.

Oh and Prosecco. What's the fucking obsession with that fizzy cat piss at the moment?!

Sorry to say it, but coffee always smells wonderful. It doesn't taste quite as good once you get it. Or maybe I'm just not a coffee person?

antigrinch I was just gearing up to shout PICNICS! at this thread. Can't stand 'em!

Everything you said plus the fact that there always seems to be loads of waste at the end.

Also on picnics... one of my favourite quotes is from Christopher Hitchens: "The four most overrated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics."

I personally love champagne, but on the rest he's dead right!

Holidays. Work is horrendous beforehand as you try and get everything organised before you leave. The first evening/morning is spent packing for everyone because your DH thinks 3 pairs of pants and socks plus 20 jumpers but no coats is the perfect selection of clothes for a holiday in Glasgow, and the DC want to take all their toys despite knowing their cousins have an enormous and full toyroom. You then leave late, argue about who didn't do what they should have done to let us leave on time, get lost, remember you've forgotten something essential for your child's health so spend the first day sorting out your GP to send a prescription to the local GP then trying to find a pharmacy in the back of beyond that actually has said item, fall out with your family, don't get even one night out because family you are visiting have social life planned already, have travelsick child for return journey and then come back to a dirty house because cleaner was cancelled during the holiday, and it takes about 3 weeks to get to issues at work sorted.

Christmas on the other hand I love because we have it at home.

Any kind of winter wonderland type attraction. It’s never properly cold in November/early December, so it’s grey and drizzly. It’s muddy and there are crazy queues to see the depressed reindeer, to see Santa, or to ice skate around a postage stamp sized fake rink. There’s always crap stalls with people flogging MLM products or those scarves you can get off Amazon for a quid, and the mulled wine is never strong enough to get a proper buzz.

Plus they cost a sodding fortune. And every single year there are people with pouty faces in the local paper complaining about how crap they are.

I don’t understand bathing as a relaxing activity. You essentially wash in your own filth. I always have to shower afterwards.