Grand Experiences — Attraction in Ontario

Called the day before an outing. The sales guy recommended reserving a canoe instead of just showing up. Gave the credit card info but he said he wouldn’t charge the card. Said he’d send a confirmation email. Once we got the email I noticed a no cancellation within 48 hours - never mentioned during the call.

On the day of it looked like thunderstorms at the time we were going - granted they can’t predict the weather, we call at 9am for a 1pm reservation to figure out what to do. The office clerk says it’s showing it’ll clear up after 10am on their “radar”. I’m using the Weather Network - what “radar” are they using? I ask about cancelling they say it’ll be half of the cost. So basically we’re forced to show up.

So we show up, sign in and they say their radar shows 15 minutes of rain on our 3 hour trip, no big deal, we expect to get wet. Canoes are in decent condition. The clerk tells us there’s four bridges, stay left on the first two, right on the last two due to rocks - COMPLETELY the opposite. End up walking the canoe at the first two bridges before we ignore his directions completely. Tell them we want to stop for a picnic. They say there’s a nice place, big boulder, can’t miss it. Well we missed it. Not exactly the best group of people to guide you along this river.

An hour in what do you know, thunder, lightening and a torrential down pour - half an hour. So we get off the river and hide under the 403 bridge which has ZERO cover, but can’t exactly get on the lake with lightening.

Finally it clears up but we are soaked head to toe, but again we expected to be a bit wet so not overly upset about that - what pisses me off is that they essentially forced us to come to canoe for $87. Granted we could have cancelled but they make no mention of a cancellation charge over the phone when booking.

So...we get back to the pick up at 4pm - last pick up for them is 5pm. We call and tell them we are here in the hopes of getting an early ride seeing as they most likely wouldn’t have other people out during such a storm. They say the next pick up is 5pm so we are forced to wait. We call back as we realize the store closes at 5pm and we won’t be able to speak to management. NOW IS WHERE I BECOME DISAPPOINTED WITH THIS MANAGEMENT.

We explain that we were essentially forced out on the river as they told us we would be paying half the fee if we don’t show up. When we show up they say their radar is clear. So we take their word. We explain we were caught in this storm with lightening in the middle of the river and they say “well you should have read the weather policy” and that they “tried” to call us to see if we were okay - no calls show up of course. They then tell us that they will send a pick up right away so we can get back earlier as we got caught up in the weather - of course this never happens. They show up at 5:20pm instead of their regular 5pm shuttle in some beat up van. So much for getting us an early pick up because of the weather.

Essentially they defended their stance instead of simply saying sorry for misleading us. We never asked for our money back - outside of the half hour of lightening and rain it was a great trip, great view, great river, our dogs had a great time too.

I would never recommend this company and will do everything to make sure that Grand River Rafting gets the business over this group.

As a person in management, I am disappointed that they would risk the lives of customers for a mere $87. It’s not about they money, it’s the principal. We reached out before we left as we were concerned about the weather, they assured us they weren’t seeing the same thing, we took their word and they essentially blamed us. I would be ashamed to work for or be involved in any part of this business if they don’t look out for the health and safety of...

USE A DIFFERENT COMPANY - THIS IS SKETCHY

This review is not regarding the kayaking on the grand itself, but how poorly run this business is. By the owner and his staff.

My brothers and I received $100 gift certificates for Grand experiences for Xmas 2021. Summer finally came and we couldn’t wait to go.

Thursday, I go to book online, it doesn’t have an option to use gift certificates and must be paid in full. Not a huge deal. I call, no answer, and leave a voicemail. I send an email as well. This is about 10am.

2pm rolls around and the business owner calls me to tell me he’ll call me back later to book. 5:30pm rolls around and I call him instead. He tells me I need to email him the serial # on the gift certificates. Our gift certificates simply say “Serial No.” and no number following. Meaning the staff did not fill it out when our grandparents purchased them.

I get no response on Thursday. Friday rolls around and one of his staff members calls me to book. She says sometimes this happens, just come in and give us the certificates.

We get there and the staff member that I spoke to proceeds to call the owner to tell him our certificates do not have serial numbers on them. She puts me on the phone and the owner is clearly very suspicious and is asking how my grandparents acquired the cards… “did they come to the store? This is very weird to me” etc. When after all this is just a gift card that his staff didn’t fill out. This took a while to sort out and was very frustrating since it hasn’t exactly been easy to book in the first place.

Whatever, 1pm rolls around and it’s our turn to launch with our kayaks. The staff member tells us there is a team out back waiting for us to give our kayaks. We go out back, no one there. We call her and she personally comes out and seems very confused. Calls the owner and he says to have us unpackage our own kayaks and haul them down ourselves to the river. We were all already frustrated.

We finally get on the river. This experience itself was great. The grand is beautiful and we had a great time.

We get to the end expecting our 5pm shuttle to take us back. We wait 30 mins and the owner approaches to say he only had room for 4 and is CALLING A CAB for the rest of us. Tells us 15 mins tops. 35 additional minutes later, a cab shows up to take us back. So over an hour wait.

What a shoddily run business. Will never go back. We have a very large network of friends and family that do kayaking and outdoors stuff in the Brant area. They’ll all be informed...

I booked a self guided tour from Paris to Brantford for a group of four. We rented two kayaks which included the shuttle back to Paris and brought two kayaks of our own, paying for the shuttle service on each.

When we arrived on time for our 9AM departure, the girl at the docks said she had my booking down for only one person. I showed her my booking confirmation and she gave our group the second kayak.

Of the two kayaks that we did rent, one kept pulling to the left the entire trip while the paddle of the other kayak snapped in half thirty minutes into the trip.

At the shuttle pick up, the driver said he had our booking down for one person and was unable to shuttle our kayaks back as he did not have the space for it. He only wanted to take the rented kayaks back. This caused us to have to take an extra trip down to pick up our kayaks which caused us to miss our lunch reservation at Stillwaters in Paris throwing off the rest of our planned day. After correcting the girl at the docks you would think they would let the shuttle driver know of their error.

I sent an email detailing my experience and asked for a refund. No one got back to me so I followed up with a phone call the next week. I spoke with Rachel and she told me she would contact the owner Jamie to see what he would do. She later told me Jamie can offer me a gift certificate for one free ride. I told her I wanted my money back. I would never go back to Grand Experiences again due to the poor quality of the condition of the kayaks, the lack of communication within their organization, inability to take bookings properly and overall poor customer service.

I later asked Rachel to speak with Jamie for a refund to which she told me he was not in. I asked her when the next time Jamie would be in and she told me she didn't know. Rachel took down my information to pass along to Jamie but I never heard back. I called back again getting Rachel. She said Jamie was not in and that I would just have to keep calling at random times of the day to reach him by chance. Just awful customer service.

Rachel turned out to be a dead end. I called back another day hoping not to get her and ended up speaking to Bethany. I explained to Bethany my situation. She apologised for the bad experience and bad customer service. She issued me a refund on the spot. Thank you Bethany! If it was not for you I would have to give Grand Experiences a 0. You are...