no clear meeting place
Guide was indecisive, inexperienced and had a tantrum and threatened to quit and walk off the tour, she never apologized. A shouting match broke out on the bus. She argued with our bus driver often. She was rude to me personally. The hotel we had to stay at was very cheap.
Tour guide was not as educated on points of interest as I felt she should be. Acadia National Park was beautiful and the 2 hr boat excursion in Bar Harbor was superb!! Bar Harbor is beautiful. Would love to go back and spend a few nights there.
The trip was very disappointing. The park itself is absolutely beautiful and we made several stops there to see the key highlights of the park. There was a driver and tour guide on the bus. The driver was excellent and very friendly. The tour guide was friendly, but that's about it.
I received a call from the tour guide the day before the trip and was told that I would need to bring an extra 65. She said this was for optional excursions, park entrance fees, etc. The optional excursions turned out to be a stop at a lighthouse and a cruise on a boat into Acadia National Park-both good. I received a 18 credit with her because I had booked through viator.com and as such, her service charge was included in my booking.
The tour guide herself was a disappointment. She did not know basic facts about the park such as how large the park is and had very limited knowledge about the area and park's history, wildlife or plant life and kept referring us to the park's information boards. She spoke so infrequently that the driver said he should have brought a DVD or something to watch on our way back to Boston. She spoke little English and her pronunciation had some issues with it she kept referring to our bus as green when it was grey. The tour guide stated that because it was a busy weekend, out hotel would not be in Bar Harbor itself and we had to drive an hour to get to the hotel. The substituted hotel was actually nice, but it wasn't what I was expecting. Because this added an hour to the second day's itinerary, we did not stop in Salem as advertised and the tour guide rushed us to get back to Boston. She almost had the driver drive straight from Bar Harbor to Boston until she finally realized she needed to use the bathroom a lot of us were mad she did not factor in more stops and several of the more mature people on the trip complained about the lack of stops.
Unfortunately, with a tour like this, I have to ask myself if I would have been better off just renting a car and driving myself. The answer in this case is yes. I was hoping for a lot more than what I got. A tour guide should have at least some basic knowledge and enthusiasm for what we are seeing. With my tour guide, it felt like she was mailing it in.