Farmer Mike's U-Pick of Bonita Springs — Attraction in Bonita Springs

UPDATED:

I have updated this review as the owner personally reached out to rectify the situation. He explained the fields (which I know they can’t control the weather and their fields are usually beautiful) and even gave a full refund for the festival tickets to make up for giving away my ID. Hearing from Mike himself, I do believe this won’t happen again. I did not rate the farmers market portion earlier, because their farmers market has always been great, so I’ll take the time to clarify that here. Their produce is fresh, they have great jams (I have the cinnamon pear one), and more. I highly recommend going for the farmers market and trying out the festival, as in previous years it has been beautiful and fun, but maybe bring your own shears so you don’t have to give your ID ;)

BEWARE IF GOING TO FALL FESTIVAL:

I am giving a two start review instead of one as the farmer's market portion is good. They have fresh fruit and veggies, some at a good price, some more expensive ($8.99 a pound for bell peppers). The main issue was with the fall event they are running. We booked the tickets expecting to pick sunflowers, pick our own pumpkin, go through a haunted corn maze, and just have a good time.

The fields were destroyed by Milton, which is fine I just wish they disclosed it on the site, so there was nothing to pick. Without knowing the sunflower field was toppled over, I gave my ID for a pair of pruning shears to pick my own sunflowers. When I came back, the girl at the booth gave me an ID that was not mine. I asked her where my ID was and she tried giving me two other ones, then said I never gave it to her(my boyfriend was there to back me up). After she said that, it clicked...she gave my driver's license to someone else. The girl was NOT looking at the IDs and was just handing them out to whomever came back up to return the shears. This resulted in my ID being given to a stranger and never returned. I talked to the manager an hour later, who was absolutely no help. To start, the girl at the booth never informed the manager what happened. When I told the manager, she just took my phone number and said she will call "when it gets returned". Considering my ID went to someone from New Jersey, I am highly doubtful. Given there was no sunflower field to pick from, no pumpkins in the fields, and the GIVING AWAY of my ID, I asked for a refund. She said she will call me the next morning for us to discuss options if it wasn't returned. Come the next day and I received no call. I called around 2:00PM where I was continuously sent straight to voicemail. I was able to file a chargeback as the experience overall was abysmal and they took no responsibility for handing IDs out like candy to the wrong people. On top of all of it, they never took that girl off the booth! She ended up losing other IDs too, so I am unsure why they would keep someone that is too lazy to look at an ID to return IDs. Just as a note, I am blonde, 5'4, Florida license, blue eyes. The ID she gave me was a brunette from New Jersey, brown eyes, and about 5'8. This was truly an act of carelessness and they couldn't even be bothered to handle the situation. I will never go back to this 'festival' and have not recommended...

We were very excited to attend this years "Haunted Corn Maze" and decided to invite a few friends. There was 5 of us in all. Unfortunately all the hype didn't live up.

We waited in line for 1 hr. and 45 mins. (we literally timed it with a stop watch). Once we got to the end there was a gentleman that instructed you when you could go in. It appeared he would let in single groups at a time. Well unfortunately when he let our group of 5 in, he also let in 7 additional people from the 2 groups behind us. This group included 4 unsupervised minors (we know this because they tried to pick a fight with several individuals and stated they were in middle school), and 3 others. As soon as we walked through the first curtains in the beginning, these 4 kids began pushing us, we told them to go ahead of us because we were not going to deal with that.

The worker said in the beginning "absolutely no flash photography or the use of flashlights". With the group that came in right behind us, that we told to go in front of us, that "no flashlight rule" lasted about 1 minute. The girl decided to take out her phone and use her flashlight while shining it in the corn stalks to look for people... We told her several times to turn it off, and she didn't. We then decided to just stop and allow them to get a little ahead of us before proceeding, to give us some distance so we didn't see things prior to them happening.

As stated previously in low ratings, you would hear the screams before getting there so you knew it was coming. Or the worker would scare the group in front of us and then not scare us...this happened MULTIPLE times. I am not sure if that is what they were told to do, or if they were tired, or if they were lazy...

In addition, they had several "scary" people just walking around; not saying anything, not jumping out at you, not chasing you, not doing anything except walking by you... if they used those people to jump out or actually do something it would have helped.

At first I thought I was being rude or a Debbie downer saying it was pretty lame, and then the rest of our group said how disappointed they were. We got more scared by customers pushing corn down into our faces and screaming then we did by actual haunted workers.

With it being a longer "walk" through the corn maze, we thought there would be more opportunities for "scary" moments. Unfortunately, there would be 5 minutes that went by with NOTHING.

With driving 45 minutes to get here, waiting in line for 1 hr. and 45 mins and paying $20 per person we really expected it to be a descent haunted walk, but it wasn't.

Highly recommend going elsewhere or...

This is a great little farm just up the road from where we live. Our family has been several times. If you go, be sure to wear long pants, and bring sunscreen. We have always had a positive experience until today. Please make sure you know the prices beforehand and also the manager needs to provide the staff some additional training on how to handle customers.

Today we went, 2 moms with 2 kids and picked berries. The kids had a blast and they asked to pick flowers. We went up to the register to get clarification on how much the flowers were. We showed a white flower my son had picked and asked the price. .35 cents we were told. We asked if this was by the flower or by the stem. We were told by the stem. We then went and supervised the children as they selected small bouquets. At checkout we were told by another employee they were $1 each, the original employee was right there and she said she was new and didn't know the price. We said this is not the price we were told. And they did nothing to fix it and were rude.

There was an opportunity for the staff to smile and say OK we understand you were given the incorrect price and we are happy to honor what we said but instead they were rude, did not make eye contact, were huffy when we tried to purchase honey sticks for the children and my friend said, we will not be purchasing these flowers at the new price. They said you picked them, you have to buy them. She declined. I purchased my flowers at the new price but the overall experience was very, very bad and handled poorly. I told the staff member, we were just looking for you to honor the price you told. We aren't upset with you as she seemed to take it very personal. She just said to me whatever and rolled her eyes.

My friend asked for a manager. We were told there is no manager, she is not here and you can not call to speak with her and they would not provide the phone number for us. We said this is fine - we can always go online to leave our review and also get the phone number. I never write less than good reviews but this was a bad experience. And it even affected our children we had with us.

So great little spot. Nostalgic too. But please be aware that pricing can be confusing and if you need any support from the staff whatsoever they need a bit of training and can be downright rude. I don't know if I'll be back after...