This tour was a huge disappointment as it was extremely poorly organized from the start. Firstly, there was no organization for lining up people for the trolleys. Some people were lined up, but then later people just filled in at the front - everyone just rushing the door. Then the next batch had to wait (30 people per trolley, we heard that Discovery Tours sold nearly 300 tickets - don’t know it those figures were accurate)
The art galleries and other participating stores, like jewellers, were in districts. We stopped at our first stop (supposed to be 6).
Then when we tried to get on the trolley for the next district, it was late. We got walking directions from the guide at this point. (Poor directions and no map) We wasted so much time finally getting to the second stop. After seeing only the art work in a hotel lobby, we decided to catch the trolley to another district. This is where everything completely fail us and a whole lot of other people. We waited 45 minutes for a trolley that had room for only 6 more people. (This left a whole line of people waiting). There was no more time left to see the last district, as the trolleys were going to be stopping the return to Discovery Tour Centre.
When we talked to the attendant there she said they had two prior such Art Crawls that worked, blaming the drivers and traffic.
I would not recommend this tour. It sounded like fun, but they didn’t deliver what they advertised.
Odpowiedź od gospodarza
Mar 2024
Thank you for sharing your experience- I am very sorry it was not positive.
What I would like you to know is that we had 225 people on the tour- the same number as last month.
The difference this time was that the second trolley and driver that we rented to accommodate these guests were new. We have one trolley and needed two to run this type of tour.
The driver we had before had an accident thursday night and was in the hospital so the driver who showed up to replace her never was given the route in advance and lives in Venice so was not familiar with Sarasota.
The trolley that came also had 10 fewer seats than before so this caused spacing issues we could not change.
We had no idea of this change until he came at 4:30 when we had 200 people checking in. During the tour, we were trying desperately to communicate with him to get to the route stops but he was lost.
80% of guests (many who had been on previous two crawls) loved the tour and had a great time, but 20% who were left at stops or missed as you describe did not.
I am very sorry for this as we take great pride in leading well-planned tours and expected the same driver and experience we had for the first two crawls. Despite all our efforts, this night was not what we wanted for our guests.
I am happy to comp you into our daytime Public Art Tour or refund your tickets if you email me privately.