Where was your most disappointing holiday, and why?

[wholetawn]

I'll start off. Our most disappointing trip was to French Polynesia in the South Pacific. The scenario is stunning, but we found the people unhelpful and quite frankly, lazy, unless you were offering to pay them a lot of money to do something small.

Bloody hell Ladysaurus 😲 sounds horrific 💐

I'm torn between Dominican Republic and Disney. On balance, I think probably Disney because by day 3 I was in tears I was so miserable whereas I managed DR without constantly googling return flights.

First holiday post-COVID was to the US to visit my family in Florida and go to Sea World resorts, including Discovery Cove, which is exorbitantly expensive. The day we went was the only time it rained the whole holiday. And it wasn't a bit of rain but a full on huge storm. We got only the morning there before they basically shut down the park. But that wasn't even the worst part. I started to feel funny afterwards and as you might guess, I had COVID. Not the worst case but was basically in bed for rest of holiday.

New Orleans. Didn’t like the atmosphere and although we were booked to stay a couple of nights we left after a couple of hours

Orlando Florida. It cost an arm and a leg, I believed the hype of a magical place. In reality, the food was expensive and awful, the weather was humid with regular downpours. I hated the plastic feel of the place, the manmade environment, consumerism thrust down your throat. Never again!

A long weekend in Dublin. We were expecting a sort of mini-London with lots of interesting stuff to see & do, but we were very disappointed. Once you’ve seen a few sights & done the Guinness brewery, there’s not much else to do except find a pub & get pissed. It was like going on a city break to Leeds, except everything was twice as expensive.

Others:
Egypt - absolutely vile, hated it—such a gross place. I cannot understand why anyone wants to go there.

I once relied too much on friends for a short trip to Mexico (I was living in LA at the time). The guy who drove us (party of 5) booked the most disgusting, roach-filled motel I have ever experienced. Then we got into an argument over this and he left me and another in the group behind. I had to take a bus to the border, walk across, and call a cab on the US side. I still think about that guy sometimes and one day, I will get my revenge.

Morocco. Horrible leery men.

Kos, late October. It was a cheap last minute deal, remember those? Where you didn’t find out your accommodation until you arrived. They put us up in a disgusting Club 18/30 hotel as the 18/30 season had finished. Damp walls, really noisy toilets, woken up by neighbours flushing theirs. Everything shutting down. Miles out from the centre and any restaurants so we hired bikes. I got saddle sore! Pool was cold and looked grubby. Oh, I hated it. I love Greece normally.

The Algarve. Had a diabolical cold the whole time. Should have been in bed instead of being dragged round sightseeing and looking after baby DD. At the end of the holiday, I got a terrible allergic reaction to the cold virus which involved itchy hives from head to foot. Didn't like the food we had much either.

Paris. Just horrible. DH and I both really didn’t like the city at all.

Really sad to hear this, as I have ties to the place, but I agree: flying in and seeing the endless lines of palm plantations below (compared to the mist hanging over a dense tree canopy, like decades ago) is depressing. Like you said, palm plantations are not all there is, but it is very offputting as they're so prevalent.

That was for @Mercurial123 !

@wholetawn I asked about best holidays earlier and some places have come up on both threads so that's confused me 😂

Tunisia - awful men just stood staring at you in the street making lewd comments.

Mine was my own fault really for not checking what I was agreeing to (but in my defence, it was before the says of internet reviews etc). In my early 20s and a relatively new friend/colleague and I agreed to go away for a relaxing week in the sun to chill out after a really busy period at work. Friend was much better travelled than I was, and said she knew ways to get better deals etc so I just agreed to all her suggestions. Back home we both seemed to like similar things, and enjoyed spending time together so what could go wrong???

I expected lazy days by the pool/beach, pottering round historic sites, lovely food and evenings sipping wine in beautiful local bars. The reality was a week in Magaluf in a particularly crap hotel. Spent the first evening on a pub crawl (that she'd signed us up to before we arrived) surrounded by 18 years old boys on their first 'lads' holiday trying to pull. Friend got together with one of them so for the rest of the week she came out with me for dinner and drinks then 'accidentally' bumped in to them, spent the rest of the evening getting off with him, went back to his place for the night, returned to our hotel mid afternoon for a shower and sleep then repeated the performance. Not sure why I put up with it really, but at the time I thought if I told her I was pissed off being left alone everyone would think I was jealous and no fun.

I've had some holidays in shitty places since but with great company so always managed to have a good time and see the funny side.

New Zealand north island. Boring, smug, Auckland was a dump and Scotland beats the shit out of it for scenery.

Morocco - full of misogynistic, disgusting perverts. Felt constantly predated on. Even the kids are forced to do scams.

Egypt - hassled all the time by shopkeepers, even the ones on the hotel complex. Well, except the one that sold postcards/adapter plugs/cold drinks, he knew everyone was going in there at some point! Food was terrible and I ended up with food poisoning. Never again!

I wonder if you went to the same zip line place we did?! We got to the first one and the kids were crying so then I was crying and told the only way down was to do the millions of zip lines. I hated it! To make it worse I got stuck on the longest one and had to get recused and then they almost broke my toe by dropping the big clip thing on it.
we won’t be zip lining again.

luckily that was the one bad thing on our Costa Rica trip as we did self drive and moved location every 3 days so we were fortunate to see sloths and toucans etc.

China. V. expensive, but with the world's worst tour guide. Taken to the wrong hotel when we arrived in Beijing after a very long journey, but the lovely staff took us to the right place.

The waiting tour guide then laughed when we told him what had happened.
It got worse. Long story of incompetence & near disasters - failed to tell us that flight & destination had been changed at one point.

Tour operator Wendy Wu eventually admitted fault & gave c.10% refund, I CBA to pursue for more.

Stayed in two different resorts outside of Albufeira. Incredibly hot and DS had just started sleeping in past 7 so by the time he woke up, spent most of the day staying inside to keep cool. We kept looking for the nice old town in Albufeira that everyone talked about, but sadly it seemed a bit of a let down to us with lots of stag parties and low quality restaurants.

Sorrento was a bit of a let down too. The town centre was really tacky, more like Benidorm than Italy,our hotel was across a main street to get to supermarket etc, but you took your life in your hands trying to get across the road with all the scooters.

The bay of Naples. Filthy, unsafe, just shockingly bad. Tonnes and tonnes of bin bags piled up on the beaches and roadsides, the roads haven't been maintained for years and it was almost lawless.

A holiday on a small canal boat - 4 of us plus PIL and a large dog. In Lancashire. In October. I honestly don't know what we were thinking

Dominican Republic, a 6* resort near La Romana.
Food was awful, chicken was raw inside so dangerous awful.
Rooms rather dismal and housekeeping was pot luck.
Not many organised excursions, and the area just outside the resort felt very unsafe, and I've wandered around some oppressive places in my time, from the Caribbean to inland Mexico to S.Africa).
Felt very disappointed (and skint).

Venice. It really smelt everywhere like sewage water.