Unfortunately this entire experience was disappointing due to our tour guy, Doug. Doug was very enthusiastic about his job, however he often made offensive comments, he made fun of past guests which was incredibly inappropriate and his driving was so terrible, I often felt my life was in danger. He ran multiple stop signs and braked late at red lights, that a few times i had to yell to him because I thought for sure he was going to run right through them. In addition, the entire drive to the Everglades he talked about flooding in the passing towns and would hold up pictures of the flooding while driving, which caused him to swerve all over the road. He even was on his cellphone while driving because he forgot to check us in at the pickup location. He later made a comment that the van was hard to drive because of its big tires, I don't know if this was his way of covering up his poor driving or what.
I did speak to the owner briefly about this, however I did not go into detail because I was so upset over the whole experience, I just wanted to get back to enjoying my vacation. He did let me know that he had spoken to Doug about his driving, so for future tours, I hope that his driving improves.
The very last piece of the trip was a drive through the Cypress Forests Preserve which should have been really amazing but instead, Doug sped through the entire thing at 55mph. I noticed the speed limit going in was 30mph. There were a ton of alligators on land and Doug just flew past them and when one of us would shout Gator, Doug would slam on the breaks and back up to where the gators were and they would have either gone back into the water, startled by Doug's driving or if they were still there we were given only seconds to look and then he would speed away again. I didn't get to take a single picture or even get to enjoy looking at a gator out of the water. I am assuming this was due to timing and he needed to get us back. However, I think we would have been able to enjoy our drive more if Doug didn't take time out of the tour to drive us around residential neighborhoods talking about property values and pointing out the families which were too poor to fix their homes after flooding. He then told us that anyone willing to buy a house there was stupid because of the flooding hazards. Which I found extremely offensive to the families living there and I wasn't there to buy property anyway.
After lunch he took us to a museum that was not on the itinerary (separate from the boat ride museum, which is a part of the tour) and made us watch a 8 minute video about the Tamiami Trail. Which I suppose some would find interesting but I considered it a waste of time, as did the rest of the group and would have preferred that extra time be spent driving more slowly on the wildlife drive.
I should mention that we did enjoy the airboat ride and nature walk. it was the only enjoyable part of the long day. I can't comment on the boat ride because there was a mix up with the reservations and we didn't get to take it. We sat and waited for an hour while the rest of our group went on their boat ride. This however, was due to the boat companies mix up and was not the tours fault. I spoke to the owner who was very upset this happened to us and he rectified the situation for us by issuing a refund for the missed boat ride. Maybe with a different tour guide, I would have had a better experience but unfortunately due to my experience I would not recommend this tour, as you are better off driving yourself around the Everglades.