K&K has long made it known that we think Vancouver’s “jewel” of Stanley Park has been coasting on its reputation for some time now. Sure it’s pretty and popular, but so were half the girls named Tanya at our high school and most of them went on to get pregnant before they were 20 by a either a manager of Footlocker or Burger King and currently eke out a living collecting Beanie Babies to sell on eBay. Oh, Nanaimo.
Unfortunately, Stanley Park’s inflated ego is only going to get bigger after it was reported this week by almost every news outlet in the city that the 405-hectare cluster of green space, caged cetaceans (great band name, by the way) and cyclists with poor balance and motor skills has been named the best park in the world courtesy of TripAdvisor’s 2014 Travellers’ Choice Awards. In the world? Apparently so, with Stanley Park beating out such heavy hitters as Barcelona’s Guell Park, Luxembourg Gardens in Paris and New York’s Central Park. We thought being featured prominently in the opening credits of the woefully short-lived 1980s sitcom Bosom Buddies would have put Central Park over the top.
But everyone knows the best thing about user-generated review sites such as TripAdvisor isn’t the fawning comments or enthusiastic thumbs up, it’s the overly negative reviews full of vitriol, disappointment and unhinged tales of persecution.
So to provide some much needed bitterness to balance out the overt sweetness, we’ve compiled our top three very real responses from TripAdvisor reviewers who gave Stanley Park a “terrible” rating.
• Alice U: “HORRIBLE PLACE”
Dogs Everywhere ... A nasty bulldog ripped my pants. Coffee cups and garbage on the grass a person had to pick up or step over. Dirtiest place I have ever seen in Canada.
• snoogle: “A den of thieves and junkies”
What a travesty of an attraction. On the one hand it is an absolutely beautiful park with tons of natural beauty to partake of. On the other hand it is replete with thieves who smash windows and jimmy open trunks with absolute impunity and a useless police force that does nothing to protect tourists visiting the city. What a horrible blight upon the city and its tourism…. Better yet, don’t even waste your time with Vancouver, overrated in every way, expensive and just not safe due to all the criminals, junkies and crazy people. What a shame, it’s such a beautiful city and location otherwise.
• PaulandJoanne_10: “A waste of space”
It was just awful. There are no clear signs whjere [sic] you are, the places to eat are open odd times and were just rubbish food as far as we were concerned. Over rated as far as we were conceerned [sic].
