This whole park is way too steep, it should've been built elsewhere. It's not even close to any real towns.

If I came with a kid I would make sure to bring their leash so as to keep then from the high ledges. On Angels Landing - the most popular hike, people on the way down are so enthusiastic about the amazing views at the top, they nearly spoiled it. I'm sure they'll do the same to you. Also, they make you ride the bus but the windows are childlocked and only open slightly so if you have an iPad you will not be able to fit it through the window to take a good picture.

There are zero good Mexican restaurants in the park.

We saw some endangered and large condors but were told the ones at Yosemite are even bigger.

1 Star. 

If you're looking for cool photos don't come to this park. The Sequioas are too big to fit in one picture. For the most part they all have burns on their trunks, and they're already 3000 years old, so they might be dead by the time you arrive. We were also told we'd see bears and we only saw one bear. They said there are only black bears in this park, but this one appeared to be blonde and wasn't even close enough to get a good picture. The only animals willing to get close to us were dear and I can see those in my own backyard.

As for the campsite we stayed at, the river was so loud that we had to raise our voices to hear each other and there were fallen trees everywhere. There was also a bunch of weird bugs and flying ants that kept getting everywhere.

It's June and there's still snow in places, a better job of snow removal might make this more accommodating to people who live in warm weather climates.

Despite all this tomfoolery we managed to have an okay time.

1 Star. 

I don't know why people come here, you can't even see the bottom of the canyon and the cell service sucks. Nobody can even explain how the Grand Canyon was formed. The pictures you take will look nothing like the real thing. There's no bridge from the north rim to the South so you literally have to drive out of the park in order to get to the other side. Even if you want to hike, it will take you two days. At the bottom of this hike, someone was considerate enough to put a restaurant, but despite the fact that's it pretty close to sea level, they dont even serve sushi.

The trails could really use some airwick, especially the ones with mule pee and BM.

Would be a better use of land for a golf course or like 4.

1 Star. 

As my cousin - a landscape photographer - astutely noted, this place has way too many rocks.

For a park that takes hours to drive through from end to end, everybody seems to go on the same handful of hikes.

People are always stopping to gawk from afar at the exotic wildlife (moose, elk, bears, coyotes, etc.), I don't think they realize you can see these animals much better on Nat Geo's Instagram page or in any basic Google search.

The reviewers have this place all wrong. It shouldn't be rated 4.9 Stars on Google, it should be rated .1 Stars. 

1 Star. 

No reason to reinvent the beach. There's no ocean nearby and there aren't even any cabana rentals. The fact that the desert is nearly 360° surrounded by mountains just makes it all the more disorienting when you can't find your car.
If eating sand at 50mph is your idea of a good time then feel free to rent the wooden sleds in town nearly an hour away.
Nobody wants to wear socks on sand but they neglect to tell you that if you don't, you might seriously burn your feet.

1 Star.

The canyons are very echoey. I do a kind of natural meditation called hisbodedus in which I go into the wild and scream. As you can imagine, it was quite unpleasant to hear the mountains yelling back at me.

At one point I found myself unintentionally eavesdropping on a couple at least 20 yards away due to the unintended consequences of their voices reverberating for everyone around them to hear.

Also, Rim Rock Nature Trail doesn't actually have much nature. It's in the high desert so as far as I can tell there's pretty limited animal life - the only animal I saw was my own dog.

1 Star. 

Seen one hoodoo seen em all. If you've seen any good movies about Mars, you've probably already seen this place - I imagine they use it for a lot of movie sets. The rangers we're overly friendly and it made us suspicious of their true intentions. I bought firrweood three times and each time I got a different amount of wood. We were able to take showers for a nominal price but there's no warning before the shower shuts off, you have to keep track of when the 8 minutes expires in your head. Make sure not to get caught in the middle of shampooing!

It was so cold some nights that we had to sleep with some rocks that we'd heated in our fire.

1 Star.

We arrived at JT in the nighttime and a weird feeling came over me. It didn't help that there are no street lamps. I know it's the desert but I studied urban planning and I know enough people visit every year to warrant streetlights.

Seriously though, did you know there aren't even any trees in Joshua Tree?! It's just a bunch of succulents, like any desert. Whoever named them trees was a marketing genius. To promote scarcity and increase demand, there is a law that you cannot chop down the trees. That means they're forcing you to go here to see them. If that's not profiting from the environment, I don't know what is.

There's a cool section of the park known for the la cholla cacti which look very huggable. Supposedly if you even touch the cactus it will throw it's pricks at you. I saw a woman touching the cactus in order to get a good picture and she didn't get pricked! Instead of the park spending money on the first aid kit outside the cactus garden, I wish they'd spend resources on educating visitors on how to safely touch the cacti as that woman did.

A few dipping pools would have been a good touch, but it's so hot it probably would evaporate quicker than they can fill it.

1 Star. 

Little information for a whole lotta park. When we tried to find El Cap we were only able to find directions from a park volunteer who pointed us into a flooded zone in the opposite direction. With so many visitors and such poor signage, we chalked it up to the park wanting to control crowds at popular destinations. When we ran this theory past a park ranger he gave a wry grin. Anyways, we finally made it to El Cap and even though noone was free soloing it, 17 people were climbing it which was pretty cool. Except they were so high on the wall we had to borrow a stranger's binoculars just to see them - thankfully some out of staters visit the park which made a moment like this possible. Our next surprise was when we saw a rescue helicopter descending on the meadow in front of El Cap with a stretcher hanging from it. Everyone around feared the worst. They were right, libby park operators were spending precious gas, spewing noise pollution and upsetting the environment all for a 'practice run.' It was the middle of summer, haven't they had enough real/practice missions already?

Good luck seeing everything you want. This place is simply way too big and has far too few campsites.

1 Star.