brace yourself

Other than mount olympus and the underworld, things are meant to look relatively normal in the contemporary world. This is a very specific for instance (and i don't even think it's a thing in the book but i might be misremembering it) but when they revealed that grover's searchers license was a physical thing I was disappointed that it was a flower. I was half expecting it to look like a driver's license, or something very innocuous, not magical looking.

Aside from gods sometimes wearing regular clothes, the show pretty much does away with this idea, which i think is very unfortunate because it's a big part of the books' charm.

The entry to the underworld is in LA bc that's hell for a new yorker (percy), and it's a crowded lobby with a grumpy receptionist. The gods have cable tv they regularly watch, monsters go undercover as teen bullys and mean teachers. I don't know if magical realism is the word for it, but I think is something akin to that that is almost completely gone, other than some highly specific props that are too famous not to be included (yankees cap, flying converse).