I wanted to write an excellent review for this. Unfortunately, I can’t. The operator of this tour, Captain Ron, was late by almost an hour taking us out and he looked annoyed at us. He said it was because he was trying to give his last customers a better experience. He then took us out and unfortunately the manatees were hard to find. He did try but unfortunately we did not get a chance to swim with any and we had to pay for another tour the next day with a different tour. The thing I’m most annoyed about is that despite failing to swim with the manatees, we gave him and his assistant, Lauren, a good tip. He promised that any pictures that were taken during the trip he would send to me for my photo book as he knew this was a big thing for me. To date despite contacting him, he has sent no pictures. The tour was a complete failure.
Réponse de l'hôte
Mar 2018
Hi, and thanks for your feedback. I'd like to personally apologize for not sending your photos along as promised. This is something that slipped through the cracks and I'm very sorry that it happened.
We here at Gulf Coast Expeditions fully understand that coming to swim with our manatees is a bucket list item for many of our guests and we truly try to fulfill that dream as best we can. Unfortunately, nature does not always cooperate and folks are left disappointed with their experience. That, however does not excuse us for not doing as we promised and sending your photos and I deeply apologize for that. If you would please resend your email address, I would be more than happy to send along your photos. I would, however, like to respond to the rest of your review, as we do try very hard to show each of our guests a great time, even when manatee viewing conditions are tough.
We were 40 min late upon our arrival back at the marina because conditions were especially tough that day. In fact, the temperatures the time of your trip were record highs for our area that time of year. This made finding the animal very difficult, which is what I told you when I called to inform you that our departure would be delayed. This delay in our departure in no way shortened your trip or took time away from trying to find manatees. We even stayed out until sunset (over 4 hrs) to attempt to accomplish our mission. We did everything in our power to ensure that you had the best possible experience, given the conditions. Because we had no availability for the following day, I went as far as personally calling another company for you to book your trip to make sure that you had seats.
Again, I do apologize for the pictures and sincerely hope that you get the opportunity to visit to our area again when conditions are better to see our manatees, even if not with us. This is truly an amazing thing to do.