86%
3 Days Toronto and Niagara
By: ally krawietz | Mon Oct 25, 2010 at 12.40 AM
We have booked this tour as part of our 10 day trip to NYC and were satisfied with it.
On the first day of the tour it was a bit difficult finding the correct bus in Chinatown as there are countless tours with this and other companies.
..Behind a desk two Chinese people were advising the bus numbers for the respective tours but we were sent tot he wrong busses twice. When we finally got to our bus our tour guide Wendy greeted us with a loud "NO!" as the bus was almost full - except for the two of us. Everything was sorted quickly though and we got on the bus to commence our travels with 43 Chinese people and 9 none-Chinese people. We saw another bus with Indian people so I think they're trying to group you by ethnicity - maybe so you don't feel like a stranger?
The Chinese unfortunately kept to themselves so we only really had contact with the other 7 passengers. We ended up becoming very good friends with one of the couples and has made the trip be forever more memorable in my mind.
There is a lot of driving and you only have little time to enjoy at the attractions. I was trying to meet up with a friend from Toronto and ended up seeing her for about 10 minutes. But all in all the tour is great. If you do all the attractions it's quite pricey but we simply informed ourselves before the trip and did
- The Thousand Island Tour
- CN tower
- Skylon tower w/o lunch (I wouldn't recommend this attraction)
- Maid of the Mist
- Cave of the winds (definitely do this if you can! You're walking where the American Bridal Veil Falls come down into Niagara River. On the Hurricane Deck you're being showered by the Falls as the powerful Bridal Veil speeds down into the river )
only. That way we had a little bit more time while people were doing e.g. The Corning Glass Museum, the Niagara Imax etc.
The admissions purchased from Wendy weren't noticeably more expensive than the ones on-site. You were always in the Fast-Track and somebody else (your tour guide) is doing all the organising/queuing for you so I didn't mind those 2-5$ more.
This tour incluides a lot of driving, getting up early and very tight time lines - but you get a lot in return. Canada is simply beautiful and the Niagara Falls are worth visiting once in your life.
The hotels we stayed at were the Holiday Inn and Travelodge, the standards were very good but the hotels were far away from the city so you weren't able to go explore on your own at night. This is probably better as this tour is not for part animals due to getting up early and lots of travelling.
I don't know about the lunch/dinner organized by our tour guide as we never went on those. Due to the nature of the group they often went to Chinese buffets - but we wanted to explore the local cuisine and went wandering off on our own. I can recommend traditional Chinese buns in Toronto.
Our tour guide Wendy was charming, entertaining and absolutely wonderful! Everybody loved her - aside from two Russian passengers that were being incredibly rude and refused to pay the service fee. Aside from that the trip was really wonderful and Wendy (although I'm sure that wasn't her real name, just simplified from Chinese for stupid tourists) and our driver Jorge were just perfect! Jorge ("George" for stupid tourists) drove us safely over 1000 miles to all our locations and listened to a lot of Chinese chatting with an angel-like patience.
I'll definitiely check out tours4fun again when i go back to the States. Read full review
80% Great tour
