Dark Ranger Telescope Tours — Attraction in Bryce Canyon City

The owner is now trying to get me to remove my review.

The owner boasts about how he is trying to bully me.

If you are considering this event, please pay attention to how this owner is treating a paying customer that didn’t have a positive experience.

Over the years I have found that Google Reviews have been useful to me when I am planning a vacation, things to do, places to stay, places to eat …etc. Google Reviews can only be helpful if paying customers are allowed to post honest reviews of their experiences without being concerned about the owner lashing out with an attacking response.

Paying customers should be able to post a review about their experience whether the customer had a positive or negative experience.

This owner is not concerned about his customers having a bad experience, he is only concerned if they post a review of their bad experience.

My review is for other people reading these reviews trying to decide if this activity is worth their time and money.

This owner has continued to post his childish rants in an attempt to distract the people from what occurred during the activity we attended. He also is hoping to prevent others from posting reviews of their bad experiences.

If you are thinking about booking this event consider this: _You will miss the sun setting over Bryce Canyon. _You will miss the sun rising over Bryce Canyon because your family won’t feel like getting up that early the next morning. _You will need to pack extra layers of clothing to stay warm during this event. _If you attend this event and you don’t have a 5 star experience and then post a review about it, the owner will post an attacking response on you.

Sort this business’s reviews from Lowest to Highest then read the reviews. You see 3 ideas in many of these reviews. Not Organized. Long Lines. Many customers leave early.

It is obviously upsetting this owner that people are reading my review and liking my review.

The owner is claiming the screenshot of the email he sent me is now false information.

This owner should do a few minutes of basic research on what his company is sending out to his customers before he accuses me of posting a false information. I posted a screenshot of the email I received from his company. This just shows you don’t know what is happening within your own business.

Customers leaving early must be such a common occurrence that there is a sign in the parking area with special instructions on how to leave the parking area while the event is still going on.

This owner made the decision to make this discussion public instead of contacting me in private.

He is going to continue to hide behind his keyboard and attack all customers who made the mistake of booking this event, had a poor experience and decided to post a review about it.

I can only post about what I observed and experienced the night I attended. This owner didn’t attend this event on May 19, 2024. He can only speculate about what occurred. He tries to come up with childish excuses why people had a poor experience instead of being a man and admitting things could have been better.

The owner has continued to push his made up narrative were his staff gave clear instructions and guidance and that all of the paying customers chose to ignore important information so we could stand in long lines not knowing what we were looking at. The owner should at least try to act like an adult and take responsibility for when you and your staff are not prepared. Instead he has posted outrageous claims like at least 84% of the customers “weren’t listening”, “not paying attention”, and “anti-social”. When in reality there was little to no instruction or guidance from his staff. I suggest you think about the way you respond to online reviews. Your attacking approach and you feeling the need to call your customers names and attempt to point out their mistakes is the wrong approach.

This area has many amazing things to see and do. Do not waste your time and money with this activity.

I cannot recommend Dark Ranger...

Dark Ranger offers both group and private telescope tours. These are PROFESSIONAL quality telescopes mounted on piles with computer-driven gimbals. All guides are extremely well-versed with the night sky and knowledgeable of the history of many objects and astronomers.

Dark Ranger offers a EXCELLENT and UNIQUE experience under some of the darkest skies in the USA's contiguous states.

The main observation location is easy to access in a regular passenger vehicle. The road is paved, and the driveway off the road is gravel and dirt. I don't advise driving a vehicle that has low clearance like a sports car or one with lowered suspension.

Private tours meet at the primary location and then drive to a nearby observation point. Accessing these requires a minimally capable crossover, SUV, off-road vehicle, or some patience in a 2 wheel drive passenger vehicle.

The Group tour is their main offering, hosing many people every night. Group generally sees fewer objects due to the larger number of people and are able to accommodate fewer specific requests. Stay later to get more viewing time and interaction with the guides.

Private groups require a minimum of 4 paid participants - you may have fewer than 4, but you must still pay for the empty seats. 3 or 4 telescopes are available to your party, each observing objects at your request or ask the guide to find objects by category, or by what is best to view under the night's specific conditions. With 4 telescopes, you will not be idle nor short of objects to observe. If you're familiar with deep space objects, I suggest keeping some in mind specifically or catagorically you wish to see.

The guides are very accommodating and happily accommodate guests who are completely unfamiliar with the sky and space objects ("what IS a star, anyway?") to amateur astronomers ("Can we start by observing M-68, Messier globular clusters, and then on to Ursa Major galaxies when it's darker?").

DRESS WARMLY. Although this is the Utah desert where daytime temperatures can soar, the very dry air and ground lose their heat, sending temperatures down to 50°F in the summer and is breazy. Winter can easily get into negative temperatures, but offers the best viewing conditions. Guides have hot drinks available to keep guests warm (free of charge), but it is very important to bring a sweater, jacket, and long pants in the summer and winter demands gear capable of keeping you warm with little physical activity.

Keep in mind weather and moon phases greatly affect the ability to observe some objects. Utah has dry air and this location is at a moderate altitude (about 6000 feet), and generally doesn't get much rain in the summer. Dark Ranger will communicate with you by text message or phone call regarding any cancellation or altered observation times the day of your reservation. In my opinion, the best moon phases fall between 1/4 waning, new moon, and 1/4 waxing. Fuller moons make observation of some objects difficult to impossible.

Dark Ranger Telescope Tours communicates very well and responds to questions in good time.

Finally, feel free to tip...

Dark Ranger Telescope Tours offers a unique and exciting experience! They keep the groups at a reasonable size so you don’t have to wait long to look out of any telescope (my wait was always less than 5 minutes). You are taught to adjust the telescopes yourself and given the freedom to do so on your own which is empowering. I’d also like to note that I was able to see a good amount of objects despite it being a very cloudy night. So definitely trust their weather guidance over your intuition. Also, they really mean it when they say it will be cold so dress accordingly!

The night I attended was the recent lunar eclipse, and we saw a number of amazing objects. I particularly enjoyed seeing the binary start system, star cluster, and the red giant!

However, the night did have a big disappointment. The lunar eclipse was considered a “special event” and thus had an uncharge. I was happy to pay for it, as I was excited to see the eclipse (particularly at it’s totality). However, this didn’t happen. It seemed that the presentation given that night ran too long, and was thus in progress when totality was reached. This was extremely disappointing, and honestly left me really sad.

It was a cloudy night, so I'm not sure if the clouds were covering the moon at the time of totality or something else happened. But, no matter what I had expected to be told when totality was near and reached so that all of us guests could try to look at the moon at that time. Disappointingly, it was not. Seeing as missing the totality wasn't acknowledged at all, it felt like it had been ignored, and that I’d missed out on the “special event”.

To be clear, I know that they can’t control the weather (and I’m very impressed with what I was able to see despite the weather), I just wish they had said something like: “Hey, just letting you know we’re about to reach totality and although the moon is covered in clouds, you can turn around and squint if you’d like”.

In summary, the ignoring of the totality soured an otherwise great experience and left me feeling very conflicted about Dark Rangers. I would recommend them highly for “normal” nights, but am not sure I’d recommend them for special events given...