Mr. Vker

LOL I was there Saturday and should have asked about the basement!

Redhead

My mother dragged us here once. It was awful Like you said, you pay $$ to be advertised to. Yuck. And I hate Coke (and 99% of all sodas) so the tasting room had zero appeal. Plus, the sticky floor was just gross

bzbdewd

Tombstone Arizona (aka Redneck Disney)
Monument Valley (Arches/Canyonlands blows it away)
South Rim of the Grand Canyon (the North Rim is gorgeous though!)
Waikiki Beach (but loved the rest of Oahu)
Branson MO (went to help someone move - just YUCK)
Beale St in Memphis
Niagra Falls either side (what a SHAME such a natural wonder has been ruined by stupid, greedy people)
Las Vegas
I could go on but those are some highlights.

Mr. Vker

I loved Monument Valley....went there in 2000. Went back in 2007, loved it again, THEN drove to Canyonlands and Arches and was blown away. Went in winter time. Wife and I didnt see another soul touring either park. It was wonderful.

bzbdewd

I can't get over all the broken glass and trash along the roadside all through Monument Valley. It never fails to p*** me off. I've been through many times.

We were at Arches at Christmas eve at about 11pm 2 years ago and photographed ice fog coming through window arch. No one else there - well below freezing It was one of the most wonderful things I've ever seen!

Mr. Vker

I remember Island in the Sky in February. Very Cold. Just me and my wife. Could see miles and miles. Magnificent. The wind blowing, but still the quiet was profound. It has to be experienced. It cannot be described.

CPRich

I only made it about halfway through this thread, but some thoughts:

1 - Doesn't something have to be "rated" to be overrated? Did anyone actually travel to Wall Drug before seeing the billboards, and did you actually expect something exciting? It was pretty much what I expected. Along the same line..Dollywood?

2 - I guess YMMV, but laying on a bench and staring up at the Sistine Chapel ceiling is one of the indelible memories of my life. And experiencing the sheer magnitude of St. Peter's was not far behind.

3 - Hawaii - did you really travel to Hawaii for the food? And to stay on Waikiki and lie on the beach? Quite a shame. Hiking among the rainbow cedars, viewing lava flowing into the ocean at sunset for a few hundred feet away, staring at the clarity of the Milky Way and seeing spacecraft pass overhead in the blackest sky from the Mauna Kea summit - those are much more vivid Hawaii memories than the (great) snorkling, surfing, etc.


For me:

Mt Rushmore is certainly an interesting technical/engineering achievement, but it's really not much to look at. I should have spend another day exploring the Badlands. Though I agree it is something you should do once.

Same with the Hoover Dam, especially after all the security waits, lines, etc. I should have stayed in the Valley of Fire for the rest of the day. And it's not a "must do once" thing.

I didn't realize the peeing boy was a "big deal". We walked by it when visiting friends in Brussels, took a quite snapshot, and moved on. If I had traveled to see it, expecting something special, I certainly would have been disappointed.

As a kid, seeing the "Romeo and Juliet" balcony in Verona sure looked like any other balcony I've seen. (I just Googled it to even remember anything about it - built in the 1930's....)

Maeby

Pea Soup Andersen's totally takes the cake for me. I took a couple people while we were in the area (doing a show in Solvang, which probably actually counts as a touristy letdown on its own)... if I wanted to pay $10 for a bowl of soup, I'd have... gone somewhere that serves soup worth $10. Eh. At least we got pictures with those monstrosities out front.

cloudcuckooland

No contest: Statue of Liberty.

crabbing

world of coke:
if you're in atlanta's olympic park at the entrance to the world of coke, turn left and head straight to the aquarium. do not pass go, do not pay $200 (or however much it costs to waste your time at the coke museum). the whale sharks are worth the price of admission alone.

hoover dam:
count me in the minority i guess, but i love it and go see it every time i go to vegas. i haven't been lately, so i can't say what "damage" has been done by the new bridge and other "improvements."

hawaii:
i, for one, would go just for the food. even the waikiki todai has fresh fish. and i still dream about the flounder belly i had at nobu in the parc.

Paint Horse

Really. I have not been to it, but sailing by night to see it glowing there all alone in the darkness was very special.

Jailer

Yikes….Sam Johnson said, “When you are tired of London, you are tired of life”, which Douglas Adams updated in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to include mass suicides.

If it’s the crowds in the Sistine Chapel, be first in line at the Vatican and run to The Ceiling, and then work backwards. That you don’t like crowds, or are lazy, does not diminish what may be the greatest work of man. With Yosemite, wait for snow and go cross country skiing, thus avoiding the RV set. Not Yosemite's fault that you don't want to get out of your car.

As for the Mona Lisa, I prefer Leda and the Swan, but it has been lost for hundreds of years, and across the hall Virgin of the Rocks and Virgin with St. Anne and Child are more enjoyable Leonardo experiences, but that doesn’t make Mona Lisa not a masterpiece. What, there are 15 or so universally accepted Leonardo’s; sorry it didn’t talk to you or do some kind of animated dance. When the Mona Lisa was stolen in about 1912 it caused the Minister of Culture, or similar title, in France to get fired and was considered a French national shame. Picasso was briefly arrested, or at least questioned, as the lead suspect.

Even the pissing boy in Brussels, that might have been a disappointment if you flew 10 hours to see, but the five minute walk from the Grand Place wasn’t wasted. Ok, so I didn’t go last time I was in Brussels, sue me.

When the guys amongst you turn down supermodels because you think that they are over-hyped, send them to my door, you can even send them in pairs. Please wait until my wife isn’t home.

While the waxen cadaver of Mao was a little underwhelming, the whole experience was not.

Maybe gravesites of famous people don’t do much for me, so I won’t tromp around cemeteries; although I’m always interested to look at who is crammed into cathedrals.

Speaking of cemeteries, you who are bored with the Statue of Liberty should dig up all the school children who donated dimes from their lunch money to build the base on which it rests, otherwise it might not be in the New York harbor.

littlesheep

Where in the 'Guide' is this? I don't remember.

learningtime

Wow, that's something to learn.

Statue of Liberty, come on guys. I guess what it "means" and how it "feels" depends on where you're coming from and who you are. I am an immigrant, BTW.

Jailer

Ursa Minor Beta

Ursa Minor Beta is, some say, one of the most appalling places in the known Universe.

Although it is excruciatingly rich, horrifyingly sunny and more full of wonderfully exciting people than a pomegranate is of pips, it can hardly be insignificant that when a recent edition of Playbeing magazine headlined an article with the words "When you are tired of Ursa Minor Beta you are tired of life", the suicide rate quadrupled overnight.

Not that there are any nights on Ursa Minor Beta.

It is a West Zone planet which by an inexplicable and somewhat suspicious freak of topography consists almost entirely of sub- tropical coastline. By an equally suspicious freak of temporal relastatics, it is nearly always Saturday afternoon just before the beach bars close.

No adequate explanation for this has been forthcoming from the dominant lifeforms on Ursa Minor Beta, who spend most of their time attempting to achieve spiritual enlightenment by running round swimming pools, and inviting Investigation Officials form the Galactic Geo-Temporal Control Board to "have a nice diurnal anomaly".

There is only one city on Ursa Minor Beta, and that is only called a city because the swimming pools are slightly thicker on the ground there than elsewhere.

If you approach Light City by air - and there is no other way of approaching it, no roads, no port facilities - if you don't fly they don't want to see you in Light City - you will see why it has this name. Here the sun shines brightest of all, glittering on the swimming pools, shimmering on the white, palm-lined boulevards, glistening on the healthy bronzed specks moving up and down them, gleaming off the villas, the hazy airpads, the beach bars and so on.

Most particularly it shines on a building, a tall beautiful building consisting of two thirty-storey white towers connected by a bridge half-way up their length.

The building is the home of a book, and was built here on the proceeds of an extraordinary copyright law suit fought between the book's editors and a breakfast cereal company.

The book is a guide book, a travel book.

It is of course that invaluable companion for all those who want to see the marvels of the known Universe for less than thirty Altairan Dollars a day - The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.