So a decade or more ago, my brother and I took a road trip from San Francisco north to Seattle. Along the way, we stopped by Portland and tried the Voodoo Donuts that I’d read so much hype about on the internet. Ends up, we were really disappointed. The donuts were awful. I remember one was covered in stale fruit loops. And a friend recently completed the same road trip and they reported that things hadn’t gotten any better in the intervening years.
What have you encountered that didn’t live up to the hype? Or, on a more positive note, what things totally lived up to the hype you’d heard before you experienced it for yourself?
If we talk about tourist attractions in general, then I highly recommend Paris catacombs. It’s still hard for me to find words to describe it, but it was beautiful in an otherworldly way.
Seconded. I mean it was good and I would definitely go again but I don’t get the cult of it.
Tourist trap stuff good and bad usually amuses me enough I enjoy it but then places like The Mystery Spot amuse me even though I know it is just tricks and showmanship and if you are passing through Santa Cruz that one is worth a stop as the guides are good at the showmanship.
A lot of the less hokey things like tourist cruises about Seattle are kind of let downs to me. Fun once but if you are ever in Seattle just take the passenger only option on the Bainbridge ferry as you will get the same view and can walk around the shops on the other side and it is free on the way back for walk on traffic for less than half the tourist boat ride.
For what it’s worth, the Voodoo Donuts that I had at their LA branch were some of the best donuts in my memory. Both the Old Dirty Bastard and Mango donuts were fantastic. But I can imagine the one covered in Froot Loops would be disappointing.
I have friends who are deeply into IPA beers and they hyped Lawson’s Sip of Sunshine and the Alchemist’s Heady Topper as life-changing experiences. For me, they were not.
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but all IPAs are on my overrated list. They’re not my thing, and there are so many of them that taste too similar to each other that I can’t tell them apart.
They taste like a bearded man peeing into a freshly-mown field, while explaining how an IPA tastes. Even though nobody asked him, and I keep telling him to stop.
I’m right there with you. I enjoy the occasional IPA (they go with spicy food and pizza nicely) but the coolers at any liquor store are filled with walls of cans with beautifully, weirdly designed labels, all with various insane, pun-filled, wacky names, and they’ll inevitably be an IPA made with some combination of hops and some odd ingredient (coriander, or lime peel perhaps, or a bagel). And they all taste nearly identical.
Even my IPA-obsessive friends have gotten burnt out these days and are more prone to order a Guinness or a gose.
I enjoyed an IPA back in the mid 90’s when there were only a handful on the market.
Now, I walk into a local brewery and they will have 12 beers on tap…1 Stout, 1 Brown or Sour Ale depending on season and then 10 IPS of various levels of “OMG HOPS GONNA PUNCH YOU IN DA FACE”.
IPA is beer talk for “we kinda suck at the beer making, so here’s a shitload of hops to overcompensate”. Find a brewery that can make a good lager, and chances are much better that their other beer styles will not suck. And sour ales can die in a fire. [I have…beer opinions.]
Per the topic at hand, Cedar Point totally lives up to the hype, assuming the hype is rollercoaster related.
