French Brothers Ltd — Attraction in Great Britain

We spent in total ~£3000 on a party charter for an engagement party & were overwhelmingly disappointed with French Brothers' service. I'm a local, have a boat locally & knew of the FB business very well, prior to booking.

If you're throwing a party, personally or as a business, I'd highly recommend steering clear.

I booked in advance & found the sales process very robotic. No care or interest - just a linear order take. With regret, I held on to hope that on the day, the event would be pleasant.

Very unaccommodating for a paid per head event. Decorations can't be delivered or put on in advance, no on the day addition of guests permitted (apparently, catering is the only reason, in actuality, it's more to oversell in advance). Again, we moved forward. Four people couldn't make it in the end (COVID), no refunds.

On the day, the skippers were pleasant & had no issues with departing a little late (bride-to-be was 15 mins late). We did have a wonderful evening, because of the crowd & beautiful backdrop, but French Brothers hold no role here & in fact, we found the following to be really upsetting:

The buffet food was edible, but bland, slightly stale, unlabelled (for dietary preferences) and predominantly beige. Stereotypical free pre-made village hall kind of buffet. Staff presented it nicely, but it's a glorified Iceland haul, really. Makes the strictness on headcount (£55/head) seem a bit silly... The sheer number of bugs on the summer evening cruises is astronomical (plague-like). This isn't a fault of operator directly, but, they should make customers aware & at least attempt to protect (mesh food covers, nets on downstairs windows, citronella scents) The bar is CASH ONLY (in 2022...), for no 'legitimate' reason. Constant cellular service, card holders were installed years ago, given nobody carries paper cash anymore, it's less sales on-board & a less smooth experience for both guests & bar staff alike. We spent hours putting together a sentimental list relevant to both our friends & family and in order of time leading up to the engagement. One of our guests, was a singer, who's music was included in the list, but regretfully made no appearance. The DJ, introduced a portion of this list, not in the same order & played several songs that would've built a 'do not play' list (the cringe-y basics that you'll know) Not as much of a big deal, but they send lots of paper in the post every time any modifications are made with printed letters. It just added to the fact it felt like I was stuck in 1990.

The boats are still good. If they let go of the 1990s, updated sales processes, documents, systems, actually moved to card payments (incl. Apple / Google Pay) & stopped ripping guests off for poor quality products for simple sake of better margin (assumed need to pay staff more given the other red flags) - this might have a small grip of retaining it's...

We hired Windsor Scepter for Friday 6th February 2015 for the evening to celebrate my husbands early retirement after 24 years with British Airways with 60 family, friends and work colleagues It took some organising but Corea helped us pull it all together to meet our own requirements. We used Jamie their resident DJ, providing him with our desired play list and we did our own catering. Michael and his Crew were great, very helpful and attentive without being intrusive even slipping in a few extra must have dance favorites just to make sure the party animals amongst us did not sit down...... Whose complaining!!!!! My Feet!!

It's Winter, it's February for goodness sake we must be bonkers going on the river for a party!!! Don't you believe it, the boat was lovely and snug, it was safe, comfortable and warm, we did not lose anyone overboard!!!! what more can you ask. We are still getting texts and comments from our guests telling us what a great time they had. It was my husband's idea, we new what we wanted and did it our way, it was a massive success and we can thank the French Brothers Team for helping us make it happen. It took us till Sunday to get over it but it was worth it ;O)

Thank you Corea, Michael, Kane, Jamie and the rest of the team (sorry I am useless with names) for helping us make the event such a success. Brian &...

We did a 40 minute boat ride with my 2 kids ages 5 and under 1. Everything was going nice a smooth, the boat was quite empty with 4/5 groups altogether. On the way back the captain decided to walk over to us and told my son to be quite considering my son was only talking to me and my husband and he is not a loud boy. After few mins he then old other few kids to shut up which seemed very out of order. There was a group of 6/7 women who were much louder than our kids but nothing being said to them but only to the kids in front of their parents. The man who said his name was Graham was very rude and ruined our experience of being on the boat and ruined our family Sunday. Very very disappointed by the behaviour, after explaining that there were other people who were much louder than my son at least why is he choosing to shout at kids? Also the boat was not full and if it had been the noise levels would’ve been much more and I’m not quite sure how he would’ve coped with that. I would like this review to be assessed and this matter to be taken care of because I do not want another family to go through what I did with my two little kids. My son is absolutely shocked as he has not experienced anything like that behaviour! I hope this review helps others, DO NOT GET ON THIS BOAT as it has possibility to ruin your...