We booked this tour as we had missed visiting Harlem on a previous visit to NY.
However, the website read much better than the reality.
The owner /guide, Neal, arrive at the tour start time. On entering the Cultural Centre the guide made some token effort to clear a floor space to put out some folding chairs. The room looked like an old attic that hadn't had a spring clean in a decade.
The website states that, "Your tour begins with a light breakfast and introductory video presentation...." - didn't happen. No light breakfast, no video. The guide did check that his tablet was charging and told us about the great music etc that we would have when we did the walking part of the tour.
The guide was very cheerful and personable but gave a disjointed, off the cuff,talk about Harlem and its civil rights history. He appeared to be filling in time before transferring us to the church about half a block away.
We arrived at the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ to find queues of other tour groups waiting to enter. There were church "helpers" on the street shouting at the tourists not to take in bags/backpacks.
The church itself was a converted picture theatre.
The tourists were herded upstairs to the gallery section away from the congregation. The"head usher"(he had a badge) was particularly officious and seemed determined to spoil everyone's visit. His resentment of having tourists in his church was palpable. I'm certain that the church enjoys the revenue stream and plate offerings and therefore should confine this man to the main church hall.
The gallery has a wide balustrade, but even so , tourists could not sit in the front row as they might drop items onto the congregation.
Most of the visitors could probably see the preacher and the choir. Otherwise there was a large projection screen flanked by two monitors to view the service but not be a part of the service.
It was better than watching a church service on TV as the music and singing were live and were the highlight of the visit. The pianist ( unseen) was brilliant.
The church service took longer than expected leaving less than half an hour for the multimedia walking part of the tour.
Perhaps the tour improved in this part but as we were running short on time , we forwent
this experience.
Réponse de l'hôte
Dec 2017
Hello my name is Neal Shoemaker and I own and operate Harlem Heritage Tours. I firstly want to apologize to the reviewer for not providing the usual experience that our guests receive when they visit Harlem Heritage Tours.
The day the reviewer arrived we were preparing to decorate our outside and inside Christmas trees and windows, having pulled all the decorations off the top shelves and, and pushing furniture into the back room, it left our office in a situation that is not the usually way, and for that we apologize to the customer.
We refunded 117.00 dollars to the customer in an effort to remedy the situation and hope one day to make it up to the reviewer, we love what we do and work very hard to please all customers and hope one day to make it up to the reviewer.