18 Nov 2019
We found the pick up location, but the guide couldn’t find our names. Another guide has to look up the reservations and saw our names. The first stop was grape picking where we did some walking and had time to eat about 10 grapes. We were only allotted 30 minutes at this location. Then we went to the Maple Lane and had to walk really far. It was rough for older folks. One group returned 30 minutes late. Then we had lunch before heading up the mountain. The food was great! We had another 30 minutes at the 5th station and another party returned to the bus 30 minutes late. We were now 1 hour behind schedule. The tour guide didn’t make much of an effort to locate the late parties. The final stop was the doorway. We rode up in the dark and weren’t able to see much. We were also freezing while in line to come down. We had to jaywalk to get back to the bus. Because we were running 1 hour behind schedule, we got stuck in traffic due to two auto accidents on the expressway. It took us 4 hours to get back to Shinjuku. If we had skipped the rope way, we would have been back by 6:30pm, but instead we arrived at 11:30 pm. The guide could hardly speak English and had no control over the group.