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| - Oh god, do yourself a favor and drive. Seriously, you'll wish you had. I found the grand canyon bus tour via SCENIC.COM, nowhere does it say it's operated by Gray Line. Otherwise all these tours all look the same. Run away if you see the Gray Line bus!
It cost $85 per person, and the itinerary sounded very promising (which I confirmed with the operator): Pick up at any hotel on the strip at 6am, 5 hours to the south rim, a brief 10 minute stop at the Hoover Dam bridge, lunch at a food court and 3.5 hours at the grand canyon and 5 hours back to the strip at about 10pm. Luxury coach seats, restrooms, and video entertainment. Sounds pretty good! We assumed that means we will get to the GC at 11am, fool around till 4pm, and get back at 10pm. BULL****!
This is what will actually happen:
At 6am the bus came to pick us up from Caesar's Palace. We were told we'll be making a stop at the bus depot, where we'll get on our actual tour bus and breakfast. Ok, fine. At 7ish we got to the bus depot (it's a long ways from the Strip) where we were herded into the west and south rim groups. Then they proceeded to give us a long winded presentation about how awesome the west rim is and if anyone wants to switch. Lots of promotion of the helicopter ride, the jeep etc saying how we can upgrade now etc. They're really trying to sell the skywalk too. Um, can we just get going?
We were then herded to another line for check in where they also tried to sell breakfast and snacks. Omg. Finally we board our final tour bus. Luxury coach seats? Ha! Very cramped leg room, no backseat pockets to put anything, no fold out table, barely reclines, the windows were dirty, and the air conditioning was BROKEN.
Finally we got going at like 8am. The bus was packed fully with like 55 people. A pre-recorded presentation was played which I appreciate. Some didn't like it, but our driver's accent was thick and he spoke so softly we couldn't understand a thing he was saying. We got to the Hoover Dam bridge and were given 20 minutes to take pics, but this wasn't a long time at all as there was a lot of climbing of stairs to do. But it was quite an impressive sight.. for like 5 minutes.
Okay. This is the thing about bus tours. That $85 may sound cheap but increasingly I just wished I had driven. Lots of drama waiting for stragglers to get back on the bus, people losing things and needing to 'run back in for like 5 mins to look for it', people losing other people ('he's on his way!') etc. As punctual people it is infuriating to watch stragglers holding up others and delaying our actual Grand Canyon time.
Finally, on to the Grand Canyon. But wait! First another stop at a McDonalds gas station, and everyone had to leave the bus. We were confused, is this our lunch stop? The driver was nowhere to be found. Not wanting to be hungry, the other passengers bought some food and we spent 20 minutes stretching our legs. Then back on the bus again after rounding up the stragglers.
At 2pm we reached our lunch area. The food was pretty much terrible. We stayed there for an hour and back on the bus, FINALLY towards Grand Canyon.
So the bus dropped us off at the first point where we get an hour to explore. This first stop is full of great photo ops but very touristy. No time for any actual hiking, just a walk along the rim and back. In exactly one hour, we were picked up and dropped off at the second point for another hour of sight seeing. At exactly 5pm we were picked up for the journey home. So our total time at the grand canyon was 2 hours, one hour each at each point. I don't know, I love the grand canyon but half a day of traveling for 2 hours at the actual site is a little much for me. It would have been better to drive in the comfort of my own car, in my own time, playing my own music and taking my own time at the canyon and leaving when I want to. It was actually 9:30pm when we got back to Caesars.
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