Naperville Kayak — Attraction in Lisle

Spent a majority of my Sunday here thanks to their policy or lack of engaging 2017 technology of allowing a reservation system. A group of 4 of us arrived at the location listed on their Groupon. Turns out that is not the actual location for this Groupon. We were detoured after finding parking in downtown Naperville. We leave their to the location not listed for this Groupon which turned out to be Pioneer park. We go there and are told there will be about a 90 minute wait. We can check-in and they will text us when boats are ready. Seems fine to be expected with their antiquated first come first served policy. We are advised to head back to downtown Naperville. We do so to grab some food. 45 minutes later as we are eating we are told our boats will be ready in 15 minutes. We now rush to finishing eating and get back to Pioneer park. It is a public park so now parking is an issue the park lot is only so big. We were lucky and were able to get a spot, but I can see that being an issue. We arrive and now we are being told it will be a 45 minute wait. We rushed to get back for this? Ridiculous. We sat there waiting. An hour has passed and we have still not started this kayaking adventure. After some time passes they have finally loaded all the kayaks on a trailer to be taken upstream and the kayak trip takes you down stream back to Pioneer Park. Their website states to check for cancellation due to water height. Again makes complete sense river with low water probably should not send people paying money and trusting you with their free time down the river right? Well not today. They advise is when you get to the river walk downtown Naperville to keep left the water is a bit low. Competely ludicrous. The water was too low for an enjoyable afternoon. We spent our time trying to break ourselves free because we were getting stuck on the river bed. This is completely unacceptable. As a member of yes service industry you offer your customers the best experience possible. You do not send them down a river with low water just to bank in the money because this is a seasonal job and you are trying to run as many people through as possible.

From a business perspective I thought they were a first year organization. Looking into their about us section on their website they have been running for 5 years. First piece of asvise is to invest in an online booking system. Allot so many kayaks for the online booking with so many for walk up business. While sitting their I saw $500 walk away simply because who wants to wait 2 hours to pay you $50. Second piece of advice is to respect your customers TIME. Time is finite there is no getting it back. You waste people's time by not having clear cut scheduling. Not having clear communication. And you waste their time simplyv by deciding not to just call it for the day due to low water. Welcome to 2017. This business could be good, but my experience leaves me with a bad taste and my recommendation would be to look elsewhere at the very least get a hold of someone and get a clear understanding of what you should experience. Getting stuck on rocks on the river walk which was unavoidable was embarrassing with all the people looking at us as if we did something wrong and infuriating knowing your managers on site knew the low water was an issue yet continued sending group after group essentially flushing money down the river. I can only hope they fix these issues but small business can either be all about the money or all about their customer as it sits Naperville Kayak seems to lean...

Kayaking down the river was fun, but once off the river it’s a disorganized mess. You walk up to a shelter and there is an employee that orders an Uber/Lyft. Make sure to stay in that end of the shelter because there is no structure to who goes when. We have been waiting for 45 minutes and every person that came up after us has left. It doesn’t take much to clean up this process. A simple sign up sheet for when you arrive at the end would make for a infinitely more efficient process.

Had a fun trip down the river, but leaving irritated. Wish I would have ordered my own Uber right away or dropped a car at the end to avoid the company option to get back to the start.

Edit: 8/4/2019 - Edited from 3 stars to 4 stars

Talked with the owner Troy (he reached out very quickly) a little bit about our experience. He mentioned that our experience is definitely not normal. They typically order the rides before you are off the water and the wait time is closer to 5 minutes. They were having some back end technical problems with the commercial Uber platform that wasn't allowing them to have the flow of rides back to start as often as normal. That's understandable.

Hopefully, they implement a system to help organize the flow of people in the order that they get out of the river. Doesn't sound like the they need it a majority of the time, but in cases like today it would have made a huge difference.

I'd go back and give them...

This was a great experience! I thought it would be part of a group, where you basically "follow a leader", but instead, they drive you and whoever you are with (and others if there's room in the vehicle), and drop you off at the start point. Then they guide you into a kayak on the shore of the river, and off you go! I'm a moderately experienced kayaker and it was challenging enough to keep me on my toes, but definitely children and beginners can handle this easily. Basically you are floating down the river - depending on the water levels, the need to paddle is fairly minimal, although we had to avoid shallow areas and we did get stuck in some shallow areas a few times but it was very easy to push into deeper water. Then at the end, Pioneer park (where we parked our car) you paddle over to the well-marked spot and they help you out. It took us 1.5 hrs; we went very very leisurely. You go through wooded areas (saw lots of geese, ducks and other birds), suburban residential areas (fun to look at the beautiful homes), and the heart of downtown Naperville, very pretty with covered bridges and flowers. There was confusion about the start point; they have 2 locations listed on one of the emails, so double check with them, although hopefully they will...