Every city has them. The places every travel blog insists you can’t miss, that drain your wallet before noon and leave you wondering why you didn’t just ask a local first. Chicago has more than its fair share.
So we put the question to our Hey Chicago Facebook community: what’s the worst tourist trap in Chicago? Hundreds of comments. Strong opinions. Several people who had been personally wronged by a sprinkle pool.
Here’s what they said.
1. The WNDR Museum
Chicago has world-class art on every corner and somehow this is what ends up on tourist itineraries. WNDR is an “immersive experience” museum in the West Loop — dimly lit rooms designed to photograph well, a Yayoi Kusama mirror room that is genuinely beautiful, and about ninety minutes of Instagram content you paid a lot of money to produce. One commenter called it “an Instagram post factory.” Another said they have more fun on their couch reading Reddit. Both are correct.
Do this instead: The Art Institute of Chicago. One of the greatest museums in the world, comparable ticket price, infinitely more to see. We covered the 12 best museums in Chicago if you want to plan a fuller museum day.
2. The Museum of Ice Cream
A chain venue from New York, now permanently installed at 435 N Michigan Ave in the Tribune Tower. It promises unlimited ice cream and delivers a sprinkle pool, a putt-putt course, and a speakeasy where drinks cost extra on top of the already steep admission. One commenter said it was “pretty scummy” and they got a free ticket. If you have small kids, this is the best day of their lives. If you don’t, there’s nothing here that’ll feel worth the price.
Do this instead: Crown Fountain in Millennium Park. Free, genuinely fun, involves actual water, and the kids will love it just as much.
3. The Taste of Chicago
Chicago’s legendary food festival returns to Grant Park this summer, July 8–12, and our community has feelings. Strong ones.
The consensus: wildly overpriced food eaten standing up in the July heat, packed in with hundreds of thousands of other people doing the same thing. One commenter recalled attending as a child with undisguised horror. Another simply wrote “1000x to hell with it.”
The neighbourhood spin-offs — Taste of Randolph, Taste of River North — are a different story and worth checking out. The Grant Park flagship is trading on a reputation it stopped earning about a decade ago.
Do this instead: Pick a neighbourhood and eat your way through it. Fulton Market, Pilsen, Chinatown, and Randolph Street will all feed you better for less money without the crowds. Or give the hugely popular walking food tour a try!
4. Giordano’s (And the Tourist Deep Dish Trap Generally)
Deep dish pizza is real and it is glorious. Eating it at the wrong place because a travel blog told you to is a different matter. Commenters were not kind to Giordano’s specifically — “soggy ass pie” was the precise formulation from one — and the broader problem is that an entire ecosystem of tourist-facing deep dish restaurants has grown up around visitors who won’t be coming back, and they cook accordingly.
The real deep dish conversation starts at Lou Malnati’s — the buttery Buttercrust, chunky tomato on top, available at multiple locations including Michigan Avenue and River North. Pequod’s in Lincoln Park does a pan pizza with caramelised cheese edges that will rearrange your understanding of pizza entirely.
And if you want to know what locals actually eat, it’s tavern-style thin crust — covered in our best thin crust pizza guide.
Do this instead: Lou Malnati’s for the classic Chicago deep dish. Pequod’s for the experience that will haunt you.
5. Navy Pier
Navy Pier has a few genuinely good things going for it — the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the Children’s Museum, the skyline views from the end of the pier, the seasonal beer garden.
The problem is everything in between. Chain restaurants charging downtown-hotel prices. Souvenir stands with the same Bean keychain you can buy at the airport. Parking that runs north of $45 if you can find a spot. And the 196-foot Centennial Wheel that costs roughly $94 for a family of four to ride for three rotations.
Locals don’t go to Navy Pier. If they do, it’s specifically for a Shakespeare show, the Children’s Museum with kids, or fireworks night on Wednesdays and Saturdays in summer. The general “stroll Navy Pier” experience that tourists are sold is a hollow walk through a concrete tourist mall with a view of the lake at the end.
Do this instead: The Chicago Architecture Center river cruise. Ninety minutes on the Chicago River, narrated by trained volunteer docents, with a view of some of the world’s most significant architecture. We ranked the 7 best Chicago architecture boat tours if you want to compare operators.
6. The 360 Chicago Tilt at the Hancock Building
360 Chicago on the 94th floor of the John Hancock Building at 875 N Michigan Ave is a solid observation deck with great views of the lake and the city. The Tilt, however, is not. It’s an add-on where a glass ledge angles you outward over the Magnificent Mile for about two minutes, costs an extra $14–18 on top of your admission, and delivers almost exactly as much as that sounds like it delivers.
Do this instead: 360 Chicago without the Tilt add-on is genuinely good value. Or go up the Skydeck at Sears (Willis) Tower — the highest observation deck in the US, starts at $35 for adults, and The Ledge glass floor is included in the ticket.
7. The Bean (At Midday)
Cloud Gate (locally known as The Bean) is genuinely one of the great pieces of public art in any American city. It deserves the icon status. The problem isn’t the sculpture. The problem is the experience of trying to see it on a Saturday afternoon, when you’re elbow-to-elbow with several hundred other people all trying to take the same selfie, and the polished surface is so smudged with fingerprints you can barely see the reflection.
Locals will tell you the only way to actually experience The Bean is at sunrise. Show up at 6:30am or 7am. The plaza is empty. The light is soft. The sculpture is freshly cleaned. You get the photo every tourist wants but can’t get, and you get to actually appreciate the engineering of the thing without 400 strangers in your shot.
Do this instead: Visit The Bean before 8am or after 9pm. Pair the early visit with a morning walk along the lakefront trail before the city wakes up.
8. Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tours
Big double-decker buses crawling through downtown traffic while a recorded narration plays through speakers. Tickets run $50 to $70 per adult for what is, generously, a sightseeing experience that competes badly with simply walking around Chicago for free.
The bigger problem is structural. Chicago is the second-most walkable major American city. The Loop is compact. The L runs everywhere. The Riverwalk and lakefront are designed for pedestrians. A hop-on hop-off bus solves a problem Chicago doesn’t have, and you pay $70 a head for the privilege of sitting in traffic at Grand and Michigan with a microphone playing a script about the Wrigley Building you’re staring at out the window.
Do this instead: The Chicago Architecture Center walking tours are $25 and led by the same trained volunteer docents who run the river cruise. Or just walk. Our 17 most beautiful streets in Chicago guide gives you a self-directed tour that costs nothing.
9. The Starbucks Reserve Roastery on Michigan Avenue
646 N Michigan Avenue. Five storeys of coffee theatre — roasting equipment on display, elaborate cocktail bar, more extraction methods than most people knew existed. If you love coffee and find this kind of thing genuinely interesting, it’s worth one visit. If you’re going because it’s on a list, the line is a serious commitment and the result is still just coffee on Michigan Avenue surrounded by other tourists who also read that they should come here.
Do this instead: Intelligentsia on Broadway in Lakeview is the local reference point for specialty coffee done with real craft and none of the theatre.
10. The Magnificent Mile (For Shopping)
The architecture is still magnificent and the bridge views over the Chicago River are genuinely worth stopping for. As a shopping destination, the Magnificent Mile has been quietly hollowing out for years. Macy’s at Water Tower Place closed. The flagship Gap and Banana Republic stores are gone. Forever 21 shut down. Multiple Michigan Avenue storefronts have sat vacant for months at a time. What remains is mostly chains you could visit anywhere — Zara, H&M, the Apple Store — surrounded by empty shopfronts where the genuinely interesting Chicago retail used to live.
The architecture walk is still worth doing. The shopping itself is not.
Do this instead: Armitage Avenue in Lincoln Park, Southport in Lakeview, and the Milwaukee/North/Damen triangle in Wicker Park are where the independent retail actually lives.
The Best of Chicago — As Recommended by People Who Actually Live There
Chicago is one of the most genuinely great American cities, and its best experiences are mostly free, or cheap, or both. A walk along the lakefront at sunset. The Tiffany dome at the Cultural Center. The architecture cruise that costs less than dinner. The neighborhoods locals actually live in.
The tourist trap economy depends on you not knowing that.
You now know.
The architectual boat tour is the absolute best thing anyone visiting Chicago can do….actual totally great for locals too. I’m from Chicago, don’t live there anymore, and I’ve been on it 3 times. It never cease to amaze me.
I love the Reserve Roastery. It’s expensive but the coffee and espresso martinis are really good. It’s nice sitting by the fire in the winter and up on the deck in summertime.