Overall, our trip to Mt Pilatus was wonderful and worth the time. The best part of the actual tour was the unguided part - cogwheel train up, lunch at the top, gondola down. That was 5 stars. The car itself was very nice, and the driver did a great job getting us to and from. But this did not feel like a guided tour -- the tour part was really mediocre, and we encountered significant delays and got zero compensation for that.
First, we were notified 5 minutes before our scheduled pickup (9:30am) that they were having car troubles and couldn't pick us up. They gave updates quite sporadically, saying it would be resolved "soon", but this kept happening for 2 hours. Finally they were able to get another car, but that set our tour back by 2+ hours (11:45am). This was extremely disruptive, as the original plan was to tour Lucerne, have lunch, and then go up the mountain.
It turns out our tour guide, while very nice, was really not knowledgeable. We had arranged with the coordinator that we would take the cogwheel train up to Mt Pilatus and then take the gondolas down. Our guide kept insisting we were unable to take the cogwheel, saying he didn't think it was open. We persisted, and he finally relented and took us to where we were supposed to go all along (and it was indeed open).
We then had a lovely visit to Mt Pilatus without the guide, and our guide was waiting for us at the bottom when we finished. So sadly, the best part of the tour was unguided.
Then the guided part of the tour started. We got to Lucerne, and he parked the car and said we would walk to see the Lion Statue. He took us on a 10 minute walk in the wrong direction, and even my kids noticed that we had walked in a complete circle. When we pointed this out to him, he tried to laugh it off. But we totally wasted our time walking nowhere. Turns out the statue was just 1 block from where we parked, but in the opposite direction.
The rest of the tour was ok. My main complaint here was that I had told him my foot was hurting and that I wanted to do minimal walking. But he would tell us some sight was "on the way" or "right by here", and then proceed to make us walk 20 minutes in the heat. It seemed like he didn't know the directions that well, or was simply trying to extend the time.
We were pretty bored and tired by then, so we asked him to just take us home.
Again, our guide was a nice guy and very good driver, but we felt like we really had an uber driver rather than a supposed expert guide. Unfortunately, we paid a premium for this, hence the 3 stars.