30 Mar 2025
We booked this tour with EMO Tours Egypt for 4 adults & 3 kids, all three less than 12 years. In my chats with EMO personnel prior to travelling, they said that I could book 4 camels on the go for all 7 of us in Giza at US$10 per camel. Our guide was Ahmed. First off, he took hold of the phone of one of us and said that he'll take all the pics. We thought that that'll give us some free time to explore. Instead, Ahmed controlled our movements, moving quickly through the attractions. He offered to pay for the camels in EGP, asking us to reimburse him at $12 per camel. When we visited the Sphinx, we were able to view it only from the side and only at a distance of more than 50 meters. We were not taken anywhere near the pyramids of Khafre & Menkaure and did not visit the Valley Temple stipulated in the itinerary. Instead, we were taken to a perfume outlet, where we spent easily over 1 hour. When Ahmed wanted to take us also to a papyrus factory/shop we declined. Neither of the last two visits were in the itinerary. When we were taken to a restaurant for lunch, Ahmad said that he has to travel far and would like to leave us with the driver to be taken back to our hotel after lunch. So, I gave him a tip to be shared with the driver, which he indicated was not enough. My son ended up giving him an additional tip. Ahmad definitely did not deserve the tip we gave him. We were quite unhappy that Ahmad's avarice muted our once-in-a-lifetime experience of this wonderful place on the Giza Plateau. After having originally booked this tour with Viator and reading in reviews that, with some companies contracted by Viator, the guides take the customers willy nilly to shopping outlets, we decided to go with EMO Tours because their reviews were much better and did not include shopping stops. We were solely disappointed that EMO Tours Egypt for this tour did not rise above other poorly reviewed tour companies. We are also disappointed that the over-the-top reviews on TripAdvisor for EMO Tours Egypt for this tour misled us very badly. We took another tour (Cairo Day Tour to Memphis Sakkara & Dahshur Pyramids) also from EMO Tours Egypt, which turned out to be much better.