Keys to the Kingdom Tour...bad tour guide?

[mellvswdw1]

My DH and I love Rae!!! Funny thing is we had her as a tour guide in 2005!!! We were celebrating our 1st year anniversary, and she made a nice gesture about it, and was gracious to guests who weren't on the tour. So nice to hear that she is still doing the tours. She is a true Disney Star in our book! I would be so excited if my DSis and I had her do our tour in just 12 days!

 

[humboldthny]

We've done the tour twice...both guides were good and had their own special areas of expertise - our 1st was also the concierge for the Castle room when they were giving it as a daily prize for Year of a Million Dreams, our 2nd had been heavily into the entertainment/performance side before moving to GR. Our 2nd guide was really funny....he loved to photo-bomb people as we toured the park

 

[humboldthny]

We did it a number of years ago and had a guide named Brick. He was enthusiastic, knowledgeable, we couldn't have asked for a better guide.

We didn't have Brick as a tour guide, but he was the CM who granted us the honor of being Grand Marshals in the parade a few years ago....won't EVER forget him!!!

 

[Eeyore98]

I hope you know 75% of the people in the US think Sleepy Hollow was written by Hemingway. The other half think it was Edgar Allen Poe.

 

[CanadaDisneyfan]

Just spent a week there and did a Keys tour with a small group. Claire was fantastic. Personable, passionate, and filled with history.
While at times it may seem over the top, you can tell she has a real love and passion for Walt, Disney World as a whole, and her job. She is a true ambassador and led a good tour.
The only complaint I have is I would have enjoyed the utilidor tour a bit more outside of the main street area.
while there is a lot of activity, we started in the custodial area.. not prime area in my mind. Its also aroudn Main Street, meaning the majority of cast members we saw are shop employees and such. I was hoping to see some of the other areas, and some of the fur or face characters in action in the utilidors.
In all, though, loved it!

I have to agree with the first poster, I've done the tour 2 times (dont think I did it 3) and had claire one of them, and LOVED her. So just because you didnt enjoy her, doesnt mean she was 'bad' IMO. Did she give you wrong info? or what made her 'bad' to you? Honestly, it really doesnt matter to me, as I know what myself and my huge disney freak friend thought. We both really enjoyed her.

Now the thing I will admit to, and maybe this could have something to do with it. I had claire almost 5 years ago now? at least 4 years. So if you've had her recently, maybe something has changed. She's wasnt young then, so perhaps something has changed in those years.

I remember her name because I enjoyed it so much, and also remember Jim from the railroad tour they do, but dont remember the other KTTK guide. He wasnt 'bad' but just not as passionate or memorable as claire. So just wanted to throw that out there.

And with the amount of info available on the interwebs and places like this, if you do lots of disney fact finding / info gathering, there isnt a lot 'new'they will tell you if you've looked into things like that before hand.

 

[bethbuchall]

We had Mark in 09 for KTTK and LOVED him. DH and I were actually watching one of the Undiscovered Disney specials on TV a couple of weeks ago and they were talking about the VIP tours and DH goes, "I wonder if they'll interview Mark." And then 5 seconds later they did so I know Disney agrees he's awesome as well

We also had Mark in 2010 and thought he was terrific. We watched that Undiscovered Disney special and were excited to see Mark.

That is the only KTTK tour that we've done. We did the Family Magic tour twice. We had a great guide the first time and convince my older son and husband to try it with us a couple of years later. That guide didn't have much personality (and we had some obnoxious tour mates). The guide did make a huge difference.

 

[BethA]

Doing tis on Friday with my son who just turned 16. Have been looking forward to it and hope we get a great guide.

 

[PrincessAli]

Many years ago, we had , Brick as our guide and he was Fabulous. I thought I had read a while ago that Brick was still employed by Disney but held a more impressive job--Ü

 

[Jennasis]

We also had Mark in 2010 and thought he was terrific. We watched that Undiscovered Disney special and were excited to see Mark.

That is the only KTTK tour that we've done. We did the Family Magic tour twice. We had a great guide the first time and convince my older son and husband to try it with us a couple of years later. That guide didn't have much personality (and we had some obnoxious tour mates). The guide did make a huge difference.

We had Mark too back in 2005! Hope it was the same guy. He was fantastic!

 

[ppony]

I'm bummed the OP had a poor guide. We took the tour in Jan. and it was our guide's first KTTK tour ever! He did a fanastic job, therew as a "plant" (read:supervisor) in the group to watch how he did. Of course, none of us knew it was his first time until the end. You'd never have known! I went straight from the end on Roy's bench to the guest services to have them do a fanatic card for him. Maybe they need to send in "plants" that the guides wouldn't know, just to be in touch w/ how they are all handling things. Maybe they do? I don't know. BIG bummer for the OP. I hope you can do it again, or perhaps write to WDW and see if they could offer your a discount on doing it again??

We wished we had done the longer tour because we didn't want it to end. I'm sad it'll be a long while before we can do it again.

 

[Babbletrish]

We did Keys to the Kingdom for the first time ever earlier this year and our guide was amazing! I can't recall his name, but I'm betting you can all help. He was tall, wore glasses, worked in Haunted Mansion (so he knew a lot of great trivia) and Tower of Terror, and was very knowledgeable with a great respect for Walt and Roy Disney and a wonderfully irreverent sense of humor and theatricality. The tour itself was fascinating but because of our wonderful guide, it exceeded expectations.

Now I'm starting to wonder if you can request a guide...?

 

[glenpreece]

Claire was our guide on our KTTK tour in November and we all thought she was fabulous. You could tell she really loved Disney and genuinely wanted to share her love with us. She was great about pointing out details and things we wouldn't normally notice and full of interesting facts. I would take her tour again!

OMG I had Claire years ago and I loved her!!!!!

 

[Meriweather]

I've been on KTTK twice.................and as far as I remember both were great!!
Have been on many tours and have enjoyed them all very much.

I do them twice because I do like them so much and each guide adds different information. Also over the years the tours change.
Backstage Magic went to different places each time (some the same, but some different). And that one was guided by DI...........and they were great!

 

[damo]

I hope you know 75% of the people in the US think Sleepy Hollow was written by Hemingway. The other half think it was Edgar Allen Poe.

That's funny math.

 

[atp]

I did the tour in June, 2010 and I got Gregg.

I thought he was pretty good. He was funny, seemed to know a lot of facts, didn't make me feel bored and he seemed to know what he was doing.

This is him, by the way

I got this picture on accident on my last day there, I saw him from a distance and had to take a picture because on the tour he said that his brother I think had worked in the Tarzan movie, and drew or helped draw baby Tarzan and and used his baby as inspiration so Gregg said we might notice some resemblance to him. I had never seen the movie so I snapped this picture so I could compare later

I don't know if he was joking about all that, but I do see some resemblance

I would like to take this tour again, but like others on this thread, I'm afraid of getting a bad guide. I wonder if Disney would tell you the name of the guide when you book the tour, if you do it on site a few days before the tour? Then I could see if it's one of the good ones. Although who knows if that would help, maybe there are even better guides not listed here.

 

[Andtototoo]

Just spent a week there and did a Keys tour with a small group. Claire was fantastic. Personable, passionate, and filled with history.
While at times it may seem over the top, you can tell she has a real love and passion for Walt, Disney World as a whole, and her job. She is a true ambassador and led a good tour.
The only complaint I have is I would have enjoyed the utilidor tour a bit more outside of the main street area.
while there is a lot of activity, we started in the custodial area.. not prime area in my mind. Its also aroudn Main Street, meaning the majority of cast members we saw are shop employees and such. I was hoping to see some of the other areas, and some of the fur or face characters in action in the utilidors.In all, though, loved it!

We did happen to see some princesses in the hallways and parking lot (and one of them was a friend of my dd who was in the CP), but the utilidors are disappointingly banal.

We had Matthew in March 2012 and he was very good -- amusing, knowledgeable, patient with questions, obviously a total Disney nut. I have to say though that I was disappointed because he really didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. So if you're a Disney fanatic, the tour may disappoint if you're expecting new info. To be honest, I really didn't find it all that exciting to see the back of Jungle Cruise and Splash Mountain or the staff hallway in Haunted Mansion or peek into a large shed with parade floats. It just felt like we weren't really seeing anything interesting or new to me and I'm glad we had my dd's CP discount to bring the price more into line with what I thought its value was. In some ways, the best part was due to taking the first tour of the day -- we got to see the CMs setting up Main Street for the day, the opening show from the back and then half of the characters walked right by us when they were leaving the show.

I think if you get a good guide and you go into it with the attitude of being happy to see anything behind the scenes at Disney and if you aren't a fanatic, then you'll find it worth your time and money.