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Anyone ever booked a day tour with them? If so what was your experience like?
Yes, I've booked probably 3-4 tours with them in different cities in the USA and Canada. I had a great experience. Good, knowledgeable tour guides. Only once did I have a problem. That was a historical walking tour in Boston last summer.
The tour guide never showed up. There were about 30-40 people standing around at the location looking for who would lead the tour. I waited 45 minutes after the tour was supposed to have started, called the contact number on the website several times, they answered the first time and told me they'd call back, they never did. When I called them back, they wouldn't answer the phone. The redeeming virtue was that as soon as the next business day rolled around, my payment was refunded back to the credit card used to pay for the trip without me having to call them or do any follow up.
I have used Viator a couple of times and just good a cooking workshop / dinner experience in Portugal with them.
I find Viator useful at times and use them when convenient. I agree with some of the other posters that some of their tours seem a little more expensive than other options, but I also have found some that are very reasonable. A trip we booked through them in Venice was outstanding.
I suspect that this is a "get what you pay for" kind of thing. Viator provides a very, very wide range of options for a lot of areas of the world. You will likely be fine unless something goes wrong, in which case they may not have much ability to fix things. If you want better service, go with more expensive options.
Another site I am just trying now is www.withlocals.com. We just booked part of an afternoon in Lisbon with them and are considering another. I am curious to see how this works out.
I have used Viator a couple of times and just good a cooking workshop / dinner experience in Portugal with them.
I find Viator useful at times and use them when convenient. I agree with some of the other posters that some of their tours seem a little more expensive than other options, but I also have found some that are very reasonable. A trip we booked through them in Venice was outstanding.
I suspect that this is a "get what you pay for" kind of thing. Viator provides a very, very wide range of options for a lot of areas of the world. You will likely be fine unless something goes wrong, in which case they may not have much ability to fix things. If you want better service, go with more expensive options.
Another site I am just trying now is www.withlocals.com. We just booked part of an afternoon in Lisbon with them and are considering another. I am curious to see how this works out.
I have used Viator for some tours in Europe. I may use it again to tour Ireland in about a year. However, in the last few years my wife and I are mostly doing in on our own with the help of a Rick Steve's tour book and, generally, a rental car. Parking can be a challenge in Europe. However, if planned carefully parking is doable. The metro in London, Paris, and Rome will get you to most places. In some cities--like Lisbon--taxis are a great bargain. I found Munich to be a very walkable city if you stay near the central train station. Taxis, local buses, and just walking worked well for us in Barcelona. The museums we wanted to see in Madrid were all within walking distance of our hotel. Walking and public transportation worked well for us in Berlin and Amsterdam.
Its complicated though. If you want to get away from the main cities a tour may be a good option. For example, we wanted to see Stonehenge, Bath, and Windsor Castle in the UK. A tour was definitely our best option. I would have driven to Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany, but all the tickets were sold out for castle tours. However, tickets were available on a bus tour that we booked. The tour also took us to Linderhof Palace and Oberammergau. The old city of Toledo in Spain is a "must see" if you go to Madrid. We could have driven rental car, but took a guided bus tour instead.
Whether Viator is a good deal or not generally depends on the people. If you have never been to Europe before and don't want to rent a car it can be a good option.
One of my favorite places. Did you tour both castles or just Neuschwanstein?
We did a package with a hotel stay for 2 nights in town. It was wonderful because the tourist buses all left around 6 so we practically had the whole town to ourselves and really enjoyed just walked around. It was June and the weather was perfect. I don't think you can stay in those hotels in town anymore. I think they closed. There were 3, it I think.
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