What's the biggest tourist rip-off you know?

[HovaGirl]

Sofia Airport, where the coffee was 4.5 euro. Their currency, the Lev, is pegged to the Euro at 50%, so that coffee would have cost a Bulgarian 9 Leva. Away from the airport, coffee is about 2 Leva.

 

[Foolg]

I was going to say Dalaman, probably the same company.

Yep, another vote for Dalaman.

£8.50 for a tub of pringles. I couldn't help but laugh.

 

[luppers]

Bodrum airport unless its changed food and drink by far the most expensive I've ever seen

Came through Bodrum a short while ago and it is now even dearer than it was a year ago!

 

[pastafarian]

Geneva Airport a fortnight ago, in departures, before going through passports/security:

Regular Burger King food for 4, including 2 kids meals, and absolutely no extras ...... £40!

could this not possibly be due to the fact you maybe got shafted with your change etc. Burger king at Geneva Airport is a must stop off for us every time we fly out of there and a regular haunt also for my traveling relatives(sad i know but the alternatives are shocking) and all have never felt it was a rip off,slightly more expensive than a BK in a city center i agree and never any offers........now if you want rip off in Geneva go for a Chinese it brings a whole knew meaning to getting shafted!

 

[Nibble]

Centerparcs. Apart from the great pool, its a rip off as you pay a lot and then pay again for nearly everything else. Expensive average grub and just ok accommodation. Horrible place.

A couple of years ago I spent the summer doing a corporate acting job there, training staff of a company that had hired the conference centres and accomodation. Was a good summer, any meal in any restaurant all day long, free coffees etc anythiung we wanted for free, free accomodation in the cabins that have pool table, X-box, sauna etc, free access to gym, a few free activities and vouchers to spend how we wished plus paid work which lasted for about 15 mins a day. Great gig for a whole summer. Then I learned how much people pay to go there!!!!!!!!!! Unbelievable! Absolute con. The sort of holiday unimaginative people with more money than sense go on. It is unbelieavbly expensive. I spent a lot of time in the Lake District one and couldn't help think how could anyone pay through the nose to go to this sterile, over-priced, overblown campsite when there is the Lake District, THE f***ing LAKE DISTRICT, on your doorstep!! If you sign up for one of these 21st century Butlins you deserve to get ripped off. You have NO imagination.

Although I will say the swimming pool and waterpark is f***ing amazing and the staff are amazingly helpful. But £45 for a 45 minute guided walk around the site?

 

[RedRob]

It's small stakes I know(50p adult, I think?), but they actually charge people just to walk up Bournemouth pier

 

[Titus]

Drusillas.

 

[Notters]

The pier and the wheel.

 

[grubbyhands]

Another vote for Selhurst Park.

 

[middletoenail]

Currently in Maldives, probably the most expensive place I have EVER been to!

 

[hybrid_x]

centre parcs heheh - for people who cannot find nature on this planet on their own.....a very funny concept- barbed wire around nature and pay to get in....hehe.......so middle class its untrue.



anything "touristy" is generally a rip off.........go it alone off the beaten track

 

[cheshunt seagull]

12 Euro for a average glass of wine in a cafe opposite Gare Du Nord last month took me back a bit. Also remember being charged £1 a head for my family to cross a bridge in Cambridge once. Agree about Venice, if they could suck the oxygen out of the air and sell it back to tourists they would.

 

[somerset]

centre parcs heheh - for people who cannot find nature on this planet on their own.....a very funny concept- barbed wire around nature and pay to get in....hehe.......so middle class its untrue

Exactly, so as a result you don't get any baseball caps, hoop earrings, fat exhaust pipes on 20 year old corsas, bingo, matalan trackies, crocks, sun newspaper readers or screaming kids under no parental control........ long may it be expensive.

 

[mikeyjh]

I think there's some sort of strange financial darwinism in play here. Are some of you that suprised that a coffee on St Mark's Square might be slightly more expensive than at Costa on Western road? Or that a cuppa at the airport might set you back a couple of extra euros than at the cafe down the road??

 

[driller]

Entrance to Baghdad cafe in Barcelona is dn expensive and the price of a drink was unbelievable.

 

[Nibble]

Exactly, so as a result you don't get any baseball caps, hoop earrings, fat exhaust pipes on 20 year old corsas, bingo, matalan trackies, crocks, sun newspaper readers or screaming kids under no parental control........ long may it be expensive.

Not true. There were loads of those types in all the Centerparcs. You get many types like that who come into a bit of money and think Centrparcs is the height of sophistication. I would say about 1 in 3 families were exactly as you have described above.

 

[T soprano]

The Clink prison museum in Clink road London
Very expensive for what it was , about 4/5 rooms( no bigger than your average living room) with a torture chair & old wooden stocks plus various other entrapment devices and loads of pictures on the Walls, as we (2adults & 2 kids ) walked into the 5th room we saw the exit signs and thought nooOooo is that it, i said to the kids you can bloody well walk round it again to get our moneys worth after that we got outside and all fell about the floor laughing how crap it was until I looked into my wallet and realised it had cost me £50 which soon wiped the smile off my face

 

[Weststander]

Legoland, nr Windsor.

The cost of the day all in was c. £175.

Thought we'd got a family ticket bargain at a reduced £120, but it turns out everyone else one way or another, had the same marketing ploy 'discount'.

The main gripe is that it has about 10 or so major attractions, but due to mega and boring queues, it is only possible to do about 3 in a day.

In summary: hours of your life wasted queuing, best part of £200 blown, and awful fatty food choices.




In contrast, the best value:

A National Trust family membership. Brilliant places visited in S E England.

Paulton's Park nr. Romsey/S'ton. On paper, a notch down from Legoland, but at a fraction of the cost, smallish queues, heaven for kids.

 

[Weststander]

Not true. There were loads of those types in all the Centerparcs. You get many types like that who come into a bit of money and think Centrparcs is the height of sophistication. I would say about 1 in 3 families were exactly as you have described above.

Totally agree with those saying CP is very expensive, but we didn't get sucked into socio-economic classifying the punters. The kids just had great fun there. (The chavs and ex-chavs must have hid there roots well, as rarely saw a football top, and not an ounce of trouble / belligerence).

 

[jimhigham]

Madame Tussaud's. Gawd knows how much to look at a bunch of stiffs?