Le Bateau-Mouche Sightseeing Cruise in Montreal

Le repas était très bon, la croisière relaxante. Le service aurait aurait pu être mieux mais dans les conditions d’une si petite cuisine c’était acceptable. Trop loin des feux d’artifice pour bien apprécier.

I should have carefully studied the reviews first of all and another thing, I learned after we showed up with tickets on our phones on Friday we really should have not used TripAdvisor at all. I felt sorry for the young man at the ticket booth who had to explain to us that they do not have a 90 minute tour on Fridays. He also said he had had to break this news to others as well. My husband said, what about 60 minutes? Well, the next one was leaving in a few hours, no wonder nobody was around. The young man said we really should have used the Bateau Mouche website. And my husband now knew why the people at the front desk at the Ritz Carlton were confused about the time, and had to try to help us find the place where the tour started. The Tripadvisor site did not give any indication. Another shock, we could not get a refund…all we could do was come back at 12:30 on Saturday. Consequently on the spur of the moment we were left with nothing for Friday afternoon and twice as many things on Saturday and me one week away from a total knee replacement operation. Our cab riding bill is quickly mounting. I suppose it didn’t help that I am finding out that we seemed to have started out with one of the best Bateau Mouche….the one we took in Strasbourg France this past December when we went for the Christmas Markets. Every person was given headsets, The same went for the Bateau Mouche in Paris two months ago. We could not make out much of what the young man was saying today. There were very few seats that faced forward on this boat today, it seemed mostly for dining and drinking. Seats around tables. Our two previous tours had nearly all seats in rows facing forward on the outside, it was just the interior ones that tended to be geared for drinking and eating, we had just finished breakfast at 11:15, no desire for food or drinks on this tour, My husband found us two seats on a padded cushion at the very back which was a miracle but the motor noise drowned out the young guide. I knew then that we had made a huge mistake. Mistake number two was the tour itself. Basically all we saw was a working river and some things at a distance, a few boats came and went plus one rusty container ship, So, my advice is…don’t do it. I have used TripAdvisor a few times in the past,,Barcelona, Portland Oregon and somewhere else and those went ok. This one….no. And to rub salt in the wound we woke up Saturday morning with an email from TripAdvisor asking how we liked our tour!

After spending $20 for a taxi to get to the boat we found out that the 90 minute trip we booked through Trip Advisor is never available on Friday’s, the day out of Trip Advisor tickets. So we had to spend another $20 dollars to go back to our hotel. The boat company said there is never a 90 minute boat trip on Fridays. They are allowing us to take the same trip today (Saturday). How could Trip Advisor not know their schedule?