Not every visitor loves everything about Vancouver

Despite overwhelmingly positive reviews, you can’t please everyone, as these comments show

People love Vancouver. A lot. It is the best place in Canada and probably the entire world, according to every report you’ve read in the last decade. But haters exist in every crowd and online trolls lurk on every travel review site.

Their numbers may be few and their observations harsh, but there may be some kernels of truth found among the reproachful reviews.

Here are some of the negative things tourists had to say about a few of our biggest attractions:

Chinatown

“If you like the ghetto, you’ll love Chinatown,” wrote one tourist on travel site TripAdvisor. The visitor was one of many that didn’t much like watching someone smoke crack on the street.

Stanley Park

Vancouver’s crown jewel needs some polishing, say some visitors.

“A waste of space,” wrote one TripAdvisor reviewer from Manchester, England, who did not appreciate the park’s lack of signage and rubbish food offerings. More than 9,000 tourists rated the park as excellent or very good on the site, but 14 called it terrible.

Even the park’s famous hollow tree wasn’t enough to impress one Yelp reviewer from the U.S. “Honestly, I’m not sure what the big deal is. It’s an oddly big and hollow tree,” they wrote.

Granville Island

Tourists generally seem to enjoy Vancouver’s fresh food centrepiece, but some say they dislike Granville Island’s fishy fragrance and arty vibe. Those who don’t normally see quirky crafts and pottery might find the place interesting, “but to me this was a big waste of time,” said one U.S. visitor on review site Yelp. “Most of the shops were closed with signs indicating they’d open whenever the owner felt like showing up.”

Wreck Beach

Just 13 of 141 people ranked the beach as poor or terrible on TripAdvisor, but those who disliked it, disliked it a lot.

“A nude haven for doper gangs and alcoholics,” one visitor from Montreal observed.

Vancouver Aquarium

“Go to your local seafood market, you will see more fishies there,” advised one U.S. reviewer on Yelp who was particularly perturbed that the aquarium featured penguins from South Africa but not polar bears from Alaska.

Gastown Steam Clock

Cameras love this unique piece of Vancouver, but surprisingly, tourists are pretty mixed on it. The “mini Big Ben” failed to impress one U.K.-based Yelp reviewer who said it was not worth a special visit, “even for the guy who occasionally sits next to it playing the ukulele and kazoo, an interesting combination of instruments.”

Gastown

Speaking of Vancouver’s historic shopping and entertainment district, some tourists find Gastown a little scary. Among them was one Washington family that — according to TripAdvisor — drove through the neighbourhood “but didn’t dare stop and get out of the car. My children were almost in tears, because they were so scared.”

Other reviewers were put-off by the proliferation of “tacky” souvenir and T-shirt shops.

Capilano Suspension Bridge

“It reminded me of a similar experience I had in Costa Rica, where I walked across a suspension bridge, except in that case it was completely free and there was a frikkin volcano in the distance and the bridge led from my cabana to the hot tub and past a zillion tropical flowers,” wrote a Yelp reviewer from Dallas.

Robson Street

“It’s very crowded with people that have been dropped off by tourist buses and the stores are the same you can find in any mall,” wrote a reviewer from Columbus, Ohio. “The other depressing thing is that (the) City does not empty the garbage containers often enough, so there are times that garbage overflows onto the street.”

Downtown Vancouver

“Not enough Tim Hortons,” wrote a TripAdvisor reviewer from Winnipeg.

You can’t please everyone.