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| - I recently did the Grand Canyon Tour with the wife and some friends. After procrastinating as long as I could, I finally placed a call on a Friday afternoon for a Saturday tour (I know, I know, not smart). Ended up talking to a young lady named Laura. I must say, for getting a cold call for a tour the next morning, she was utterly fantastic. I wanted to do the deluxe tour, which included transportation, the actual GC tour, and lunch. All this without having received confirmation from my bud that HE actually wanted to do this. Laura was cool enough to pencil me in, and was very patient through the entire process. She even gave me her direct extension to give her a shout after I finally figured out what we (as a group) were doing.
I called back about 20 minutes later and did the deal....and was glad I did. The bus arrived to pick us up at the Wynn pretty much on schedule. This was a "feeder", taking us to Planet Hollywood/Miracle Mile Shops to parse out the paperwork on all the tour customers, get them on the right bus with the right tour tags, etc. This took about 20 minutes, and we were off to the GC!
The bus guide was relatively (in a corny way) entertaining...but definitely made the 50+ minute trip seem shorter. Once we pulled into the new visitors center/bus parking, we started the regular GC tour (see separate review).
Upon our return, we were off to the mandatory stop at Ethel M Chocolates (methinks they pay serious bank to ALL the bus tour companies to stop here).
We then got the first shocker....this is more of a heads up then anything else. The bus driver was responsible for taking each customer back to his/her hotel. We're talking a standard touring bus, so you can imagine the potential for watching the day slip away dropping off patrons across LV (with those wonderful 20 minute traffic lights...ok, maybe not, but sure seems that way). Luckily for us, we'd done the Deluxe package, so we were the 2nd stop (whew!).
Ok, 2nd shocker - buying the Deluxe package does indeed get you lunch, to some degree. It gives you, in reality, a $10 credit good at any restaurant in the Miracle Mile Shops. Yeah, you MIGHT be able to eat for $10 each, but good luck. Oh...wait...that's not the shocker...the real shocker is that said lunch is WELL after 3pm. Just another heads up.
Said Deluxe package also included taxi vouchers to get us back to our hotel. This, alas, was the final shocker, which took this review from a five star to a three - said voucher is through Whittlesea Cab - a cab company that is (from what we saw in 15 minutes of looking), nonexistent at the taxi stand at MMS. We talked to every taxi company that pulled up, NONE would take the voucher.s. We called the # on the vouchers, where we were informed that "we don't dispatch cabs for vouchers. You can either wait for one of our cabs, or just pay to get back". Nice.
In this case, another company directly impacted the review - too bad for GC Tours, but at the end of the day, they're the ones who sold the Deluxe Package, so own the score.
I definitely recommend them, but not the Deluxe Package (for obvious reasons). And do be aware of the realities of the end of the day drop-off. Logistically not a whole lot you can do about it, but that doesn't change the suck factor.
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