Bad Excursions?

[Yukon]

Almost all of our discussions here focus on what the best excursions are. With 80-100 choices in each port, perhaps a discussion in the other direction could be useful too. Have you been on an excursion that you really felt wasn't good value?

 

My trip to Juneau last week gave me my first experience in that direction in a very long time, when Cathy and I went on the Historic Juneau Gold Mine Tour. It's advertised as a 3 1/4 hour tour, run by Princess. The driver/guide who picked us up at the dock did a very good job of narrating the history and such of the route we went to the mine on. Once we got to the mine, we were passed off to Ursula, who is the worst guide I've ever heard, and flavoured the rest of the tour. She "parroted" her spiel in a way that produced no sentence breaks, no emphasis - sounded like a few other Princess-trained guides I've heard, taken to the extreme. We then went underground, where Ziggy did a fabulous job - knowledgeable and passionate about his subject. Back on top, we were passed off to another girl who was not quite as bad as Ursula. Then we were given the opportunity to pan for gold using the ore from the mine - uh, this is a hard-rock mine and the ore can't be panned! (but, of course, everyone found a few flakes). The "goldpan" was about the size of a small soup bowl. The tour only lasted about 2 1/2 hours - the only way you could get 3 1/4 out of it would be to lock everybody in the tiny gift shop. I used to work underground in a mine, and it was great to get back there, but unless Mike and Ziggy are given the whole tour to do next year, save your $59.

 

Murray

[Mysteryreader]

I started a thread about our poor experience with a rafting company in Denali. Rather than repeat the story, I'll let you check it out.

 

M/R

[ute_fan]

We were on the NCL Sun this summer, which stops at Wrangell. The only "bad" excursion on our trip was the jeep excursion on Wrangell. Not really horrible, but I didn't think it was worth anywhere near the money they charge.

 

The trip starts off right near the pier, which is nice. They had about ten jeeps that drove out of town for about 20 minutes, then turned off on a dirt "logging trail". We have paved roads here in Utah that are rougher than that logging trail :rolleyes: . Drove along the logging trail for about 1 1/2 hours -- pretty scenery, but no "4 wheeling" experience, and no wildlife. Back onto the same road, and back into town.

 

The jeeps are equipped with 2 way radios, and the guide did a fairly good job of communicating with us, but there just wasn't really much to see. The price was $119 per person for a 2 1/2 hour trip -- and not justified from my point of view. The only thing that came close to justifying the cost is that my DD (age 18) LOVES jeeps. She enjoyed the trip, but of course, she wasn't paying for it.

 

Yukon -- I should have known better than to book this after reading your commentary about the one in Skagway.

[Yukon]

One of the "guides" for the Skagway Jeep tour came up to me a few days ago and said that he had heard that I wrote a book about the mountain he takes people up. When I said that was true, he asked me "what went on up there?" He's been taking people up all summer, and has no idea of what's significant about the mountain - he wanted a 10 word summary of my 170 pages, so I said there's a bunch of silver mines up there dating to 1905-06. He was happy with that and went away. Their Denali Jeep tour is also being trashed by both visitors and locals, for similar reasons to yours, ute_fan.

 

Murray

[Boo's Mom]

The Lumberjack Show in Ketchikan.

 

This would be my choice for a very poor value excursion. It isn't that the show was so bad. It was "cute". My problem with it...is that I felt that it was way overpriced.

 

Although I don't remember the exact pricing...it was something like $15.00 per child and $30.00 per adult.

 

It was a canned production. Not exactly what we thought we were heading into.

[Jacqueline]

There isnt all that much to do esp if the weather is really bad in Ketchikan- we enjoyed kayaking but of the weather was terrible it would not have been much fun.

I have rarely seen an excursion priced at less than what you quoted so I guess I am somewhat jaded when it comes to excursion pricing. Some people seem to enjoy this show as it as different than what is offered in other ports.

Good thread- lets keep it going !

[42trvl]

Unless you're really into the lumberjack thing or have kids who might find it "cute," I would agree with Boo's Mom that this was not really worth it. Also, if you sail on RCI/Celebrity, some ships now stop at Icy Straight Point. Nice port, but we found the Native Dance Show there (not sure what it's actually called), way overpriced and just okay. Especially in light of the fact that they have some dancers/entertainers/natives all around, this was something we could have done without, which also wasted a lot of time (they started over a half hour late waiting to lure in more people) in a nice port where we were only docked for a very short time.

[Coral]

Good post.

 

I agree with Boo's Mom about the LumberJack show. It was my 4th cruise through Ketchikan and I was looking for something different. It was cute but "canned" - I wished it wasn't "canned". It was also overpriced.

 

I also did the Duck tour in Ketchikan - cute but in retrospect, I wouldn't recommend it.

 

The one tour I was extremely bored with was the Guard Lighthouse Tour (Eagles) in Ketchikan. I couldn't wait to get off that boat - tour lasted way too long.

 

As you can tell - I have not had great luck in Ketchikan with tours.

[Jacqueline]

I tend to agree on Ketchikan being a bit of a weak link. ISP sounds a lot more intriguing...

[Budget Queen]

All ports have their gems with Ketchikan having a good Totem Heritage Museum and excellent Preserverance trail. Misty Fjords floatplanes are also great. If you do some homework, many times just finding parts of the city's where history was made can be interesting. The more you know the better. Request each city's visitor guide. As for bad tours- I haven't been on any- but I have low standards. :) I like my cheap and high dollar touring. :) Go figure.

[Coral]

I tend to agree on Ketchikan being a bit of a weak link. ISP sounds a lot more intriguing...

 

Let me add one more Ketchikan story....

 

My Saxman Village tour was also disappointing but on this, it could have been the circumstances. It was early in the season and there was confusion at the pier and to make a long story short - we took off about 40 minutes late to Saxman Village. Once we got there, there was no power at Saxman Village - so instead of watching the 13 minute video in the beginning - they made us sit in this room doing nothing. Then, they rushed us through the rest of the tour because we were so late and had to leave on time. Our guide, wasn't the best here.

 

Next cruise - I am definitely doing the float plane.

[Genessa]

We were booked on one of the dogsledding helicopter rides that was cancelled last year in Juneau.

As a replacement, we were offered a floatplane ride (did receive a significant refund - through Princess). While the floatplane ride was fun and interesting, as we've never taken off or landed on water before, it is the one tour I would never repeat.

[Jacqueline]

BQ- you are good at digging for the gems. I felt the kayaking was a good bang for the buck but we were in Ketchikan the one day a year that is was beautiful. Has it been pouring my kids would have been very cranky.

We also walked to the fish hatchery which was okay.

But I would say there seem to be better places to spend flying $$ than Ketchikan and better ports for native american culture.

But I have only been there once so I dont pretend to be an expert.

[JohnQ]

Ketchikan--Last week, we wanted to see Saxman Village after our Misty Fjords floatplane, and since the Summit arrived about 4plus hrs later than scheduled, we really had to scramble. We talked to the tour desk at the dock and took the tolley tour of the city and Saxman. We made it clear that was what we wanted to see and experience. I understand that these tours can not go into the carving shed unless no ship tours are there. We had a knowledgable guide but she seemed surprized to be taking a bus load out at 3:30, which ended up being 3:45. We took our time thru town and stopped along the way at creek and in forest area to look at empty eagle nest and trees. We were bored and eager to spend time at Saxman since we didn't hve time two yrs ago. We finally got there and it was all closed up. It was 5 by that time but she said the silvers were running and they had all gone fishing. But we didn't get the empty fishing rate but rather $25 each. We still looked in at the carving shed for plastic wrapped work in progress, and she knew some details on totem poles outside. Ok, but make sure you know what you will get.

 

Juneau--Medenhall Glacier- when you only have an hour and its raining steadily, is pretty much waste of time. Exit Glacier is much better looking from the ground and more accessible.

[telesaps]

Although our excursions were great (emerald lake horseback riding, helicopter glacier tour, float plane, and salmon fishing) my friends went on the Totem Blight tour where you board a bus and they take you to some totem poles. This was a 2 1/2 hour tour and they ALL fell asleep! I heard from others on the ship that this was a very BORING excursion!

[LibLively]

In Ketchikan, we took a float plane to Misty Fjord with a boat trip back. It was billed as a float plane and "wildlife" excursion. The float plane trip was quite lovely, but once we landed, we boarded a large jet boat which did a "very quick pass" along a small section of shore and then headed back to port. The boat trip back took almost an hour and a half and basically all you did was sit on the boat while they "raced" to get back to shore. I thought the boat trip was a complete waste of time and that we should have just done a round-trip on the float plane, which was the other option offered. If we'd seen any wildlife on the trip back, we would have been going so fast, we wouldn't have been able to see it we were travelling so fast!!

[ute_fan]

Telesaps --

 

On the other hand, we did a combined Totem Bight/Saxman Village tour and loved it. Ours was only about 3 hours for the combined tour -- I will admit I don't know what you would have done at Totem Bight for 2 1/2 hours.

 

Totem Bight ended up being my favorite of the two sites, due to its beautiful location right on the water. The scenery was absolutely beautiful, which added to the totem pole experience. We had a great guide (used Sourdough Tours), who told us lots about the surrounding area, pointed out Salmon berries growing on the bushes, and filled in lots of historical information.

[hooked-on-travel]

In Skagway, don't waste your time with the train/Sawtooth Mtn hike sold on the ships. We thought it would be the perfect way to take the train (I'm an engineer, so that was a priority) and get a neat hike. They kicked us off the train a couple miles into the journey! The ship description makes you think you're actually going to ride on the train. To me, a couple miles doesn't count. We sat on it while people loaded longer than we sat on it in motion. The hike was OK, but nothing I needed to pay $80 for when there are free hikes in Skagway. They offered beer to us for while we waited for the train to pick us back up, but I don't drink, so it didn't add to the trip's value.

 

The lumberjack show in Ketchikan sounds just like the one we went to in Branson, MO. It was cute, but I think it's better in Branson for three reasons. It included dinner, the backdrop is Tablerock Lake at sunset, and it's not so expensive for us to get there from KC. The more I spend getting to a place, the higher my excursion standards. It's not so much that I mind a bad excursion. There's always some redeeming quality. It's just the opportunity cost of not getting to do something better.

[carmzav]

In Ketchikan, we went on the tour of the retired Libby fish cannery. It was okay, but I didn't think it was worth the money. I was bored. (I'm not even sure what we were expecting when we signed up for that one!) Luckily, everything else more than made up for it!

[luv2travel54]

Please bare with me, this is long but I am still so upset about this that writing about this might help. Just got back from our Alaska Cruise on the Carnival Spirit last week. I had booked my shore excursions through Dolly Varden Alaska almost a year in advance of our cruise. We had booked the Eagle Preserve Float trip in Skagway and were very excited for this but it didn't happen! First, our ship arrived late about an hour and a half due to a medical emergency of a passenger the night before. So we got off the ship as soon as we could and raced down to where we were to meet our tour guide. Dave from Dolly Varden was there waiting for us and we hopped in his jet boat to go to Haines where we catch the float trip. Well, about 2 miles out in the Lynn Canal, his boat broke down and we had to turn around and barely made it back to shore! I had my DH and 3 teenage girls with me and it was kind of scary being on a broken boat out in the middle of the water. When we got back to shore, Dave said he would try and get us over to Haines somehow. However, the ferry that had all the other cruise passengers had already left and there was only a salmon fishing boat available. So we ended up getting on this salmon fishing boat thinking the boat captain was taking us to Haines but once we got going, we reallized we were really going salmon fishing. There wasn't any time given to us to negotiate what we were going to do so it was really a mistake that we ended up on that salmon fishing boat to begin with. I belive that we were bamboozled into going salmon fishing because Dave couldn't get us on the float trip and still wanted his money. My DH is very easy going and neither he nor I said anything once we realized we were going fishing instead. We just tried to make the best of it thinking it might be fun catching some big salmon. But all we caught were 5 salmon that were too little to keep and we had to throw them back. It was a very boring trip and my daughters fell alsleep inside the cabin. I told the boat captain we wanted to go back since we weren't really catching anything and we wanted time to at least do some shopping. Well when we got back to shore we were to my disbelief charged $695.00 for the trip! The captain wanted his money up front as Dave said that he would refund our money from the float trip. I believe Dave got half of what we paid to the captain. My husband paid for it as he didn't want to cause a scene. I can't believe we were so stupid and got on that boat not knowing for sure what we were in for. But the way things happened so fast and Dave's boat breaking down, it just happened. The next day we were in Ketchikan and it was raining hard so our Misty Fjords Flightseeing trip and kayaking were cancelled. I was actually kind of glad about that because I was still fuming from paying all that money for a boring salmon fishing trip. Never again will I book independent or through a booking agent like Dolly Varden. Next time I will wait until I am on the cruiseship and book through them at least I will be assured of what I am paying for and not get on a boat that breaks down. I have called Dolly Varden and they are supposed to be refunding all the money from my tours I booked with them, but I am still out the fishing trip money. Thanks everyone on this board who reads this, I needed to vent. Any replies will be appreciated.

[jrask]

Luv2travel54,

 

That was the worst story I've ever heard. I'm so sorry. I was gearing up for a story about how you didn't make it to Haines because of the breakdown and thought, while disappointing, they can't be furious because breakdowns happen. Then, I thought it was going to be a funny story about wacky mishaps aboard this salmon boat to Haines. And then to find out what the story was really about. I'm sufficiently shocked. Venting fully justified.

[Bribrittmom]

Luv to Travel-that's a terrible thing to happen on vacation! I would call the Better Business Bureau and report the guide from Dolly Varden who misled you. You have a right to a full refund in my opinion.