We booked England Coast to Coast with NatGeo because we wanted to do that specific hike across Northern England, and the NatGeo trip description sounded the best to us. But now that I have gone on one NatGeo trip (and have another booked), I have a list of at least 10-15 more that I am dying to do (more hiking trips, but also family trips and others). The things that most impressed us about NatGeo in comparison to ABD were that NatGeo guarantees its departures (at least the Adventures trips) once a minimum of 8 people has booked. I have become very disenchanted with ABD's lack of a firm guarantee policy. The other thing we really liked was the group size, which was capped at 16 (and we had 14). For the family trips, the maximum size is 25. I much prefer the smaller group experience to ABD's 44 (and we had 49 on our ABD Baltics cruise add-on, which really had a negative impact on our experience). On our England Coast to Coast trip, I pretty much knew everyone's name and something about them by the end of our welcome dinner and briefing. The guide ratio on NatGeo was also way better than ABD. We had three guides for 14 people versus 2 guides for 44 (or more!). The baggage handling was also better with NatGeo. Instead of early morning bag pulls, we simply left our bags in our rooms when we left a hotel that we wouldn't be returning to, and they were waiting for us in our room when we arrived at the next hotel (so no waiting for bags to be delivered either). We were very impressed with the inns and hotels we stayed at, and the food as well. Overall, just a really great experience.
