Popular tourist destinations are popular for a reason, but that often means that you are stuck battling hundreds, if not thousands of other travelers who all want to pose in front of the same statue, room or fountain.
Someone asked “Which trip/location was ruined for you because of crowds?” and netizens shared their best (and worst) examples. We also got in touch with veteran traveler Lauren Juliff to learn more. So get comfortable as you scroll through, prepare to take some notes, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.
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As a Canadian, tourism in the Banff National Park is destroying the environment. Hard to enjoy when you're seeing such disrespect for it constantly around you.
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Bored Panda got in touch with blogger and veteran traveler Lauren Juliff and she was kind enough to answer some of our questions. Firstly, we wanted to hear what travel tips she would have given her younger self.
“I would tell myself that everybody has bad experiences when they travel. When I first set out to travel the world, it felt like I had walked straight into disaster. I got heatstroke, I got lost, and I got scammed — all within the first month of my trip! It’s something that not many travelers write about online — on Instagram, everybody shares their highlight reel, but there aren’t many people who are willing to share that nasty bout of food poisoning they just encountered.”
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“For a long time I thought that the problem was me. I believed that everybody else was successfully traveling the world and having an incredible time, so I had to be doing something wrong. Of course, I wasn’t doing anything wrong! Everybody has bad things happen to them when they travel, whether it’s lost luggage, being pickpocketed, or missing a flight. What’s important is to stay calm when something terrible happens. Breathe, collect yourself, and strategize a response: what can you learn from this experience?”
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We also wanted to hear her opinion on how to figure out budgeting and time versus cost. “If you have the funds to allow you to make the most of your travels, then it’s definitely worth doing so. Time is the only resource that cannot be replenished, so it’s important to make the most of what we do have. If you have limited vacation time each year and paying extra allows you to see more of the world, I can certainly understand why somebody would make that choice.”
“Paying more money allows you to avoid many of the stresses that travel brings: you can choose to skip long layovers, reduce your chances of lost luggage by flying direct, avoid crowded transportation, and stay in safer neighborhoods.”
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Lastly, we were curious about what general tips she might have. “Definitely make sure to read up about the destination you’ll be traveling to: learn a few words of the local language, research any common scams, and make sure you’ve packed the correct clothing if traveling to a conservative country.”
“Definitely get travel insurance before you leave: it’s always better to be safe than sorry, especially when it comes to your health. As somebody who has been hospitalized in four different countries while traveling, knowing that I wasn’t going to end up with an enormous medical bill at the end made the whole experience a lot less stressful.”
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“Make sure you research the money situation in the country, too: do locals expect you to pay with cash or have they transitioned to cards-only? Will your foreign cards work while overseas? Have you notified your bank that you’ll be traveling? Do you know the current exchange rate? Having the answers to all of these will make your first few days in a new country a lot smoother.” You can find more of Lauren's work on her Instagram and her website.
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When you plan a weekend in Lucca Italy as the romantic end to your honeymoon, double check and make sure it doesn’t coincide with one of Europe’s largest comic conventions held there. Lol. It didn’t ruin the trip. But it definitely wasn’t what we planned. At least we got a great story out of it.
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I traveled all over Germany and Netherlands.
Amsterdam was ruined because of extremely pushy street dealers who'd constantly follow you around and harass you.
Munich Germany was ruined just because the crowds were so bad. You could leave the hotel, stop, and the crowd would probably carry you along. There was a person like every square foot when I was there.
In my experience, the more of a "tourist" city it was, the s*****er it was, and the more off the beaten path the better it was. Everyone in this forum probably knows that's true, but I think people in general don't realize.
If you hear that "everyone goes to ________," you probably don't want to go there.
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I'm shocked that no one has said Prague.
I've been to many of the places named in this thread, including Venice in summer and Kyoto in April, but nothing was as bad as Prague in September. Wall to wall tourist and all the shops sold cheap tourist c**p. The main square was full of bad street performers that had nothing to do with Prague. It felt more like medieval Disneyland than a real city. We didn't like it at all.Santorini. Went in October and it was still packed! Some tourists were super rude too
Edit: just in Oia I meant!Yosemite. Go there for peace and calm of a national park, to be greeted with filled parking lots, illegally parked cars blocking others, tik tokers going way off marked trails ruining the nature, bad human behavior everywhere.Most tourist attractions in China. People think they've seen crowds... they haven't seen crowds in China.Christmas in Singapore. It was the lines and waiting that killed my experience going to touristy things.
Summer: pretty much any water park I’ve ever been to. I avoid those now.Angkor Wat. First time I went there in 2001 and monks were all over and locals genuinely friendly. Now you’re a number and it’s so crowded and full of rules that it’s hard to enjoy.I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Barcelona yet. We first went in 2003 and loved it. Lots of tourists, but it was under control. Went again in 2009 and it was more crowded, but bearable. Went again in 2017 and it was kind of insane. It was wall-to-wall tourism. It was like a theme park.Santa Monica in California. Used to be cool but now it’s just so packed it’s hard to even enjoy.Phi phi, Thailand.
Amazing scenery and waters completely destroyed by vast seas of floating tourists in orange life jackets. The island is tiny and completely packed with hotels, bars. In the town you can not see any thing except 3 story buildings. The streets are packed, the beaches are packed. It is about as far from “island paradise” as one can have nightmares about.Mt. Rushmore was packed with morons. Issues with parking, people just standing in everyone’s way, rudeness, kids screaming and running around.
Had I not already been in the area, I wouldn’t have bothered.Versailles. I knew it would be busy, it was summer, but it was a massive bucket list visit for me, and there were SO many people inside the palace that I could see way more people than the actual rooms and treasures (the Hall of Mirrors had no magic for me due to crowds) and we felt like cattle being herded. However, we absolutely loved the gardens and other buildings (Petit Trianon etc) so overall still really enjoyed the whole day.The Vatican inside St Peter's Basilica. This was pre-covid so experience may be different now but there were sooooo many people. I wanted to stay inside the Sistine Chapel to admire the ceiling paintings but I was being pushed along and it was so noisy.
It was still a fun experience but totally spoiled my experience of looking at the relics and paintings.Super specific because it just happened, but the Time Out Market in Lisbon. Thousands of people packed cattle-style into a food court. People walking aimlessly or stopping abruptly in front of you while you try to carry a tray with drinks on it around, looking for a free space at a table that doesn’t exist.Machu Picchu - don’t get me wrong it was definitely beautiful, but way to many people, and nearly all of them just there to take photos of themselves.I wouldn’t say ruined, but enjoying places in Rome like the Trevi fountain or the Spanish Steps was near impossible due to crowds.Kyoto. Just left the other day. I imagined Kyoto was some peaceful provincial antithesis of Tokyo. That is how it is marketed,anyway. But the crowds are absolutely intense. I’m talking 10s of thousands of people amassing at the popular sites: Fushimi Inari, Arashiyama, Nishiki, Kiyomizu Dera, and Ninenzaka / Sanneizaka. No where to move. Nowhere to escape.
To me, Kyoto is the poster child of how Instagram (and the mass affluence of society) ruined nice things.Rio, Brazil. Actually most of Rio was fine, but when we went to the Christ the Redeemer statue… holy c**p. You could barely move, it was awful. I usually don’t go see things like that but we had family with us who wanted to go.Rome. Nice city, but too many people all overcrowd the same tourist attractions. Also, having so many people in close proximity doesn't help at all with the hot summer weather.Dubrovnik Croatia, we went last August and the streets were sooo crowded you could hardly walk through. I was used to seeing the influencer photos and videos all of that was totally misleading. It was a very cool city and I’d love to go back in April or October. The same goes for Split.Plitvice.
I don't mind crowds in cities, but Plitvice is supposed to be nature and it felt like a theme park.Everywhere in LA is crowded everyday. During the middle of the week, early in the morning, late at night, always. There’s no parking anywhere, so you have to search forever to find a spot, so we’ve turned around and gone back home a couple of times. Hiring an Uber is expensive. Parking fees are expensive unless you get lucky. Traffic is the worst, sometimes it takes 30 minutes to go a mile. There’s trash and bad graffiti everywhere, people yelling at each other in the streets, and there are solicitors in front of every other store. The touristy spots are torture because of crowds. Those are just things from off the top of my head.Cinque Terre, Italy in August. Felt like sweaty sardines everywhere we went.Most of Quintana Roo, Mexico. And most of Bali, Indonesia. (Thoroughly love both countries in general though)
It”s not just the crowds, but also the demographics of the crowds - mostly people there to party and be tourists.
I don’t mind crowds, and I don’t even mind a good party destination - I love Las Vegas for example.
But when the place feels overrun, and shady markets start popping up for tourists (d***s, prostitution, animal exploitation) I don’t like it and I’m very aware that I’m contributing to the problem by being there.I didn’t love the crowds on the Greek Islands (particularly Crete and Santorini) but I wouldn’t say it was ruined for me. It took away from it but it’s still an incredible place
I personally would target a Europe trip in May or September if I could but if you only have summer, you only have summer.Change of the guards @ Buckingham Palace.For me Yellowstone and Florida keys. I also went to Italy in June and the crowds didn't bother me as much as the previous 2.... I guess I had been to those places before so I knew what it was like without crowds.The Great Wall of China.
It didn’t ruin it for me, still was amazing. But there was a point where is was so crowded you could hardly move.Edinburgh during August. The Fringe Festival and the Military Tattoo make that city unbearable. Have been at other seasons and it was delightful!Forbidden City, Beijing
It was a surreal experience, it felt like hordes of cattle being pushed around. The Forbidden City itself was beautiful, but the crowds man...and the ancient Chinese art of hawking loogies everywhere didn't really add onto it...Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland. I walked down the path to the shore, thought to myself “this would be really cool if there weren’t so many people”, then walked back up the path.Krakow, Poland. The drunk British chavs were a bit too much.Jeju Island, South Korea. I couldn't even get in the water to swim at the beach because the crowds were too huge ):.Disney World in Florida and Tokyo Disneyland. Avoid both during any statutory holidays (local and international), especially when schools are off.
My family used to go to Disney world once, sometimes twice a year in the 90s and early 2000s when it was considered cheesy and tacky. It was a paradise. Much smaller crowds, little to no lines and everything was much more affordable.
Tokyo disneyland was the same. We went during what was supposed to be the slow season, but apparently local schools had a surprise holiday and it was wall to wall people. We hardly got on any rides and I felt claustrophobic in the crowds - they were even larger than the crowds in Florida.
Hard to feel the “magic” in either place while being crushed against other people, forced to stand in two hour lines and paying hundreds of dollars for lacklustre accommodation, food and merchandise.Museums in Paris were crazy even with the timed entry tickets. Made it harder to enjoy some of the art and sights, especially in Versailles.The worst for me has not been a specific city but a specific type of destination. Famous museums can be so full that admiring the art is difficult. And it’s so disappointing to see people walk to each piece, hold up their phone in front of others’ faces and snap a picture, then walk away. Don’t even take time to look at it with their eyes instead of their screens. Why even bother? Just look up the art online and lessen the crowds! Musée d'Orsay in Paris was the most frustrating.
Oh and the Natural History Museum in London was the most packed I ever saw a museum in my life. I can’t believe they did not limit capacity. It was so hot the day I was there and many exhibits are not air conditioned. The atmosphere was stifling and hard to enjoy the visit.For me, it was a US trip - the Grand Canyon. Soooooo many people, and all clamoring to get close to the edge to take a picture. It gave me major anxiety and I could not get away from the crowds fast enough. We eventually found a spot that wasn’t overrun with people but it wasn’t long before the crowds found it too.Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. I recently went to see the cherry blossoms at full bloom - and unbeknownst to my naïve self, so did everyone else and their mother! It was a ZOO. In some ways the crowds there felt even worse than what I've experienced in, say, midtown Manhattan, because with all the mud and flooding and erosion, the already-narrow walkway seemed to have gotten even narrower. And if you got impatient and simply couldn't take it anymore, you couldn't just get off the "sidewalk" and walk on the "street" because you'd ... fall into the reservoir.
Moreover, there were hordes of tourists and Instagram influencer types dressed in white linen sundresses (when it was still like 50 degrees Fahrenheit out), sparkly pink ballgowns, and even traditional Chinese hanfu, followed by their hapless Instagram husbands - I mean, personal photographers - armed with giant DSLR cameras and light reflectors, and taking up all the best photo op spots and just taking up space in general ahhhh.
I was lucky to be able to go in 2021 and it was worlds apart. Looking at my photos from then, the crowding was much lighter and totally manageable. And yes, I know, complaining about other tourists while being one myself ...Interlaken and Jungfrau. Over run with huge tourist groups. They climbed into flower beds, trampling plants in order to get a picture. At the Jungfrau we barely made it down a staircase after lunch. A large group of tourists took over the steps, rushing upstairs and had no respect for personal space or safety. We took a very early train to get to Jungfrau and thankfully we were leaving as the hordes descended. The “groups” involved were from 2 different countries.The Alhambra in Granada. I went in the morning on a Thursday in early March and it was still so packed. I had to wait an hour in line before going into Palacios nazaríes and it was way too busy to enjoy. Granada as a city is amazing though and I plan to go back.Not a summer destination, and I still love visiting every fall, but the first time I went to Salem MA. It was a weekend in October and it was so unbelievably packed we couldn’t do most things we wanted to. I’m a huge Halloween fan so I literally cried that my first experience in Salem was “ruined”. I still go back every October but now we know better to go during the week lol
An international summer destination would be Santorini Greece. It’s so incredible at the hotel/resorts but when you go into the actual town it is SOOO packed especially at sunset time. Mykonos was extremely packed also. There are lots of less popular islands in Greece to visit that are far less crowded.Sedona, AZ. Hiking a small trail with a thousand other people? Pass.Rhodes. We left after one night having paid for five. It felt like an amusement park and was filled with tacky tourist vendors, German tourists and so many beggars. I had a couple months in the Greek isles and that experience completely changed our plans. Found a low traffic island and stayed there for the last weeks of the trip.I went to the black beach at Vik in Iceland around 2016 and it was the most amazing, vast, bleak place. Went back in 2019 (so really not a long gap!!), and it was heaving with tourists. The incredible feeling and impression I had before was not at all there the second time.
First time I was there in winter and second time in summer, so I’m sure that contributed. But Iceland has become so so much more popular as a tourist destination in the shortest time!La Sagrada Familia. It was the first time I had been to a super touristy site so I think was caught off guard by the wall to wall people. Now I am more familiar with over tourism I have learned to manage expectations and manage my visits.
I have to say when I do consider my favourite travel experiences over touristfied places never rank in my top ten. I am still glad to have visited those places but it so exhausting (and not the good type like at the end of a hike, just draining experience) working your way through the crowds that it does take away much of the magic of the visit.Currently in Osaka and Universal Studios was HELL on earth today.The monk alms ceremony in Luang Prabang, Laos. When I first went it was not busy, people were respectful and it was a pleasant thing to do. Went back a few years later after Laos got more tourist attention (especially from Chinese tourists) and it was horrendous. People hassling the monks, going right up to them a taking flash photos in their faces. The whole thing was gross.
Apparently they wanted to stop, but the Laos government just told them they'd hire actors to replace them if they did.
Luang Prabang is amazing, as is Laos in general. The people are lovely, the scenery is stunning and the food is great. But duck the monk ceremony. Spend the dawn watching the boats on the Mekong instead.Acadia National Park and Haleakula on Maui. Signs everywhere to stay behind ropes where they’re re-constituting natural plants and tourists who can’t read signs and trample. I yelled at so many people. If you can’t read English use your phone to translate the sign that appears to be telling you to keep off!Palace in Bangkok was pretty f****d up.
Likely 500 Chinese tour busses there at the same time.
Scammers everywhere including all the tuk tuk drivers in the Area.
Still beautiful, but you literally had to pull yourself through people to get anywhere. Was a sweaty, stinky mess in the sun...I wouldn't quite say "ruined" but the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum. It's one of my all time favorite historical artifacts. It was one of the main things I had to see in London. I got there and basically had to fight my way through people who were obviously just there because other people were crowding around. Just as I began to get close enough to really see it, some guy with a camera literally shoved me, with both hands, out of the way to get his photo. I s**t you not, that is the closest I've ever been in my life to punching someone ?. Overall, it was still really cool, and I got a lil fridge magnet to remember it by.Cairo, but more so because of the lack of tourist. I was basically the only tourist everywhere (I saw like 10 others at the pyramids but that's it). Made me the only prey for the huge amount of Egyptians trying to get my money.Paris.
don't know if I would've liked it anyway but waaay too many people (yes, I was one of those people as well but I won't be going back there).
we waited outside for like an hour in the July heat to get in the Louvre with tickets bought in advance.The Indian Wells Tennis Tournament is always very crowded due to the best players in the world and the beautiful CA desert. But in March 2021, when this tournament was postponed due to the pandemic, we took a chance and attended the event in Oct 2021. People were still squeamish about COVID despite the popularity of vaccines.
We stayed at the player's hotel, the Hyatt Regency in Indian Wells. During non-pandemic times, this hotel is cost prohibited for us. However, since the demand for rooms was low, we paid 50%-60% of the going rate.
The hotel was about 60% full. We had the most enjoyable time because we saw players in the hallways and restaurants. It was easy to get a dinner reservation since the pandemic kept the crowds away.
I appreciate this experience and know it’ll never happen again. Another example of travel during the down season.Louvre museum.Temple Square in Salt Lake City. I went with my family casually, and there were so many 21 year old sister missionaries that we just had to leave. We had conversations with ten before we got back out on the street.Florence! Especially the art museums with tons of tourists standing in front of paintings just to take photos. That really gets to me.Leavenworth, WA the first time I went. It’s adorable and picture-perfect for Christmas, but I went two weeks before Christmas one year and it was just shoulder-to-shoulder packed with people in town. In the streets, in the shops, in the restaurants. It felt like Disneyworld.
I totally recommend going if you’re in WA, but go at a different time. They keep all the Christmas lights up through February, so after the holidays is a better time to enjoy it. It’s also beautiful in the summer too, and there are tons of outdoor activities nearby.Amalfi coast, everything was packed/booked out and crowded. Never felt like a piece of cattle more than in Positano.
