Is it incorrect to say "All the trip was so fun?"

To me, the phrase "All the trip" sounds wrong, but I've been reading the different explanations of when it's acceptable to use "all," "all of," "entire," and "whole" and I can't find a rule that explains why it would be wrong to say "All the trip..." With that said, it just sounds wrong to me. I want to explain to my ESL students WHY that phrase is incorrect but I can't figure it out.

Does anyone know if it's incorrect and why? Thanks!

Solution 1:

all the is used before a plural noun to refer to all the items in a collection, as in

All the kids on the trip had fun.

When you have a singular word, but it can be considered to be made up of parts, and you want to emphasize that you're referring to all the parts, you use the whole or the entire, as in

The whole trip was fun.

Solution 2:

From the above answers you will see that the 'of' in 'all of' is redundant. Strictly speaking, 'all' and 'both' are inclusive, but 'of' is separative. So, it is correct to say 'some of' but not 'all of' or 'both of'. So we say 'all the time', 'all the people', but 'some of the crowd'. the idiomatic difficulty comes with pronouns. 'Both of them' and 'all of them' have long histories for all their logical transgression.