The yearly "other" tour operators thread

[Smuggs]

I know some of you have done trips with companies other than ABD. Who have you used and who would you use again? Who compares service wise to ABD?

I looked at Trafalgar and Globus since those were names I knew, but do not really know anything about them.

 

[Bobo912]

I've traveled with Tauck Bridges and Lindblad/Nat Geo. TB is the most like ABD. Service suffers a bit due to having one guide vs. two with ABD, but overall they are very similar. I would travel with TB again.

The Lindblad trip was slightly different, since it was mainly a cruise with 98 people, 16 naturalists and the ship's crew. We did break up into groups of 16 or fewer whenever we left the ship for an excursion. Service was excellent, from the moment we arrived at the airport in Miami and were greeted by a Lindblad representative, to the airport in Guayquil, to the hotel, etc., etc. The ship crew and the naturalists were fantastic. Everything about the trip was excellent. I would definitely travel with them again.

 

[Momof3greatkids]

Thompson Family Adventures is also a company to look at!

 

[Tozzie]

I am so annoyed I cant even look at the website to see the itineraries for abd or other companies A large tree went over in the stupid storm this weekend and took my cable line with it it is too hard to read onmy Iphone and it might be a while before they fix it

 

[*WDW*Groupie*]

I've traveled with Tauck Bridges and Lindblad/Nat Geo. TB is the most like ABD. Service suffers a bit due to having one guide vs. two with ABD, but overall they are very similar. I would travel with TB again.

I did not know that TB only has 1 guide. How many people were on your TB trip? I know that with our recent ABD being full, we really needed both guides. There were 43 or 44 of us and I cannot imagine just 1 guide with all of us!!

 

[Pakey]

I have done AbD (London/Paris) and Lindblad/Nat Geo (Egypt) and am currently booked for the Amazon with Lindblad/Nat Geo. Lindblad's Egypt trip was about the same price at AbD's Egypt was supposed to be, this was in 2010.

It's probably hard to compare because London/Paris is so much different than Egypt. Both tours had about the same number of people (40) and had two guides. The difference is that AbD kept us together more; Lindblad split us into two groups of 20 with separate transporation and we had the same guide all the way through. Lindblad guides were much more knowledgable than AbD but I expected that due to the association with Nat Geo. The itinerary/pace was similar but accommodations and food were much better with Lindblad (food quality was my biggest complaint about AbD).

I am doing another Lindblad but I would also do another AbD if they were going someplace I wanted to go with a tour. Most of the places AbD offers are places we would do on our own

 

[Bobo912]

I did not know that TB only has 1 guide. How many people were on your TB trip? I know that with our recent ABD being full, we really needed both guides. There were 43 or 44 of us and I cannot imagine just 1 guide with all of us!!

I think there were 40 people on our trip. IMO she did let some things fall through the cracks and didn't follow up on a request I made of her (although she did it for a lot of other families). I think part of the problem was that she slept a lot later than DS and I did and by the time she was leaving her hotel room in the morning we had already finished breakfast. I think she may have shared information with the other travelers during breakfast and we missed it, but I'm not 100% certain of that. There was a couple traveling with us who was always up early too, but the rest of our fellow travelers were not such early risers.

I agree with Pakey about Lindblad. The guides (or naturalists in our case) are experts. And the food is better. Another thing about our Lindblad trip, was that everything was included. I only spent around $500 during the 10 day trip, about half of which was tips for the crew. In comparison I spent around $2000 on the 8 day SWS trip last month.

 

[vakamalua]

The BEST family tour we ever did was with Abercrombie & Kent to Australia. There were only five other families with us. We had one guide but she took care of us like family--she even went out and bought us all hats when one night at Uluru was predicted to be cold!

We started in Sydney, went up to the Great Barrier Reef (Hayman Island), then on to Port Douglas and the rain forrest, then to the red centre for two nights at Uluru in the outback before heading back to Sydney for the return.

They had amazing activities--surfing lessons, a sea plane trip over the Reef to go snorkeling, an astronomer to do a talk on the southern night sky, etc.

I would travel with them in a heartbeat.

We also did Japan with Tauck--it was a great trip but there were considerably more people on the tour and we definitely felt better taken care of with A&K.

I think ABD is pricing themselves out of the family market, especially to those trips that you could easily do a much cheaper way (e.g. Ireland, England).