Sticky: Casablanca Taxi Tour

[General Max]

We are looking for a private guide / taxi cab tour of Casablanca on Wednesday October 26, 2005 arriving on the HAL Westerdam. We would like a minivan to handle at least 6 people as we will likely have others with us from the cruise. What is a good price for four hours?

 

Cheers

 

General Max

[General Max]

I would think that 30 Euros per couple would be fair and give him a 10 Euro tip.

 

Cheers

 

General Max

[General Max]

I guess I should have initailly asked if there even are taxi cabs in Casablanca.

 

Cheers

 

General Max

[Bobblsc]

General Max,

 

Check the next post down "Guide/driver in Casablanca". I am checking with Bobbie to see if we are interested in the same type of private tour. I have also noted that the train station is just outside the dock area for a possible trip to Rabat.

 

I get conflicting info from various web sites about hassle by people on the street in Casablanca. It's not said to be unsafe, however. :eek:

 

A few months ago I talked to a student (I think) in the sauna in the health, exercise, and swimming pool building at the U of Arkansas. He had lived in Casablanca for a few months, and couldn't wait to get back. (There are a lot of heated discussions in the sauna.)

 

Bob (bobblsc):cool:

[General Max]

bobblsc, maybe we can do this if you don't want to take the train to Rabat. we want to stay in the Casablanca area. Would also like to stop at Rick's cafe from the movie.

 

Cheers

 

General Max

[Bobblsc]

General Max,

 

We don't really care to go to Rabat. Have checked with my admiral, Bobbie, and we are interested if she can have a short time to shop in a bazaar. 9:00 am is early for us but we can make it if no earlier. I will go to roll call and sign on. I had difficulty finding this site again. Was only able to by using our computer's history. Search function does not seem to work well. May not be able to return to this Casablanca site.

[General Max]

We all had a great time in Casablanca with out Tour Guide and driver. We even stopped at Rick's Cafe for lunch and pictures.

 

Cheers

 

General Max

[General Max]

We used Tangierstour.com

[br_luv2travl]

cannot open the website tangierstour.com - could you pls check it out. I am interested as we will be returning to Casablanca and looking for some tour ideas there (not with the ship). Thanks

[General Max]

I believe the website has been taken down or renamed. The tour guide's name is Abdul.

[General Max]

I get the same message on the website. That's why I said there is some problem with it. However, you can reach Abdel-Hamid Idrissi by sending an email to his email address noted in Post #18: tangiertour@yahoo.co.uk . That worked for me; and I received a response from him the next day. Cheers

[br_luv2travl]

Thanks for the info. Much appreciated.

[bcscot]

We visited Casablanca on the Prinsendam in may.After reading rave reviews by various people,about Abdel at Tangier tours,we decided to book with him. Firstly he was difficult to communicate with & very slow to reply to our e-mails. We finally booked a trip to Fez with him ,telling him the ship arrived at 7am. He confirmed our booking but as he did not give us an exact pickup time,we thought someone would be there to meet us as soon as we could get off the ship for this long daytrip.

Next problem, & not Abdel's fault, was the fact that ship's time was one hour behind local time so we arrived at 6am local time(7am ship's time). This also meant we would be leaving one hour early.I hoped that Abdul had his "ear to the ground "& would know about the change.However he had booked a driver for 8:30.Having got up very early & arriving at 6am, we had two & a half hours to wait on the dock by which time my family had given up & gone back to bed.

When he did arrive, the driver was volatile & a little aggresive.We had no time for Fez by then so changed the plan to tours of Casablanca & Rabat.He was not interested in the deposit that we had paid Abdel, pulling the car in to the side of the road to negotiate a new price. He said that Abdel was a travel agent in Tangier(hence Tangier tours) & had nothing to do with Casablanca, apparently booking his clients with local companies like his. Infact, this chap was quite disparaging in his comments about Abdel.

We had quite a nice tour of Casablanca including the mosque, & also of Rabat, although the restaurant for lunch was a poor tourist trap.We were disappointed not to get to Fez though.He also tried to get more money out of me at the end of the trip.There was quite a bit of unpleasantness overall.

It made me wonder if people were seeing the real Abdel, or just people claiming to be him!

You win some & lose some.I think private tours are still worth it, but they do not always work out.I just wanted to let people know that my Abdel experiences were different from others.I am still grateful to those who shared their information with us.

[freddie]

bcscot - We are booked with AbdelHamid for both Casablanca and Agadir in November, based on the good reviews of his firm on this CC board. Would you be so kind as to send me any info (name, firm, etc.) about the guy you had the bad fortune to use in Casablanca, so that we can tell AbdelHamid that we don't want to use him? That would be quite decent of you and might help us to avoid the problem (extortion) you experienced. My email address is: freddie98282"at"hotmail.com. Thanks for the help. Fred

[bcscot]

I am sorry, but I do not have any info. on the chap in Casablanca. It was all organised by Abdelhamid & I do not even remember the chap's name. It seemed to us however that Abdelamid was more responsible for the disorganisation of the event (although not the ship's time problem). It seems to have been a combination of problems coming together that upset our day.

Just be sure that you know your pickup time,your agreed prices & check that ship's time is the same as local time, & hopefully you will have a wonderful time. We still had a good day inspite of the problems. I just wanted to alert people to the problems that we had, so they could avoid them. I think you are still better off with independent tours than ship's tours. You just have to be aware that they do not always work out. You win some & you lose some! A life of ship's tours would be a very expensive one of frustration & drudgery!

I hope that you have a great trip & enjoy what is a fascinating country.