Banff Jasper Collection by Pursuit — Local services in Banff

Interesting experience with Pursuit for sure. First, we made the mistake of assuming that all of the venues were reasonably local to Banff, which is where we were staying. After realizing that we would have to drive 4.5 hours to get to one we immediately tried calling to get a refund and couldn't reach anyone. So, we stopped into the office in Banff and were told that there was really nothing they could do to help us. We weren't allowed to book earlier than 3:30 because of the pass we bought, and it didn't matter that the only spots available were on the same day but hours apart, and it was impossible to actually get to both during the time provided. At one point the representative offered us an 11:00 spot, apparently not realizing that she just told us many times that we had to book after 3:30 or she had to get manager approval for a change, but never offered to actually speak to a manager. Customer service was pretty bad, but whatever, it was our mistake for not checking out locations first.

Because she booked us at 11:00 we figured out that they don't really have systems to track most of what happens with their passes so we went ahead and rescheduled as soon as we arrived on-site, every time. They had people showing up on the wrong days and that still didn't matter - they just re-booked and put them in a group to go to the activity.

The activities are really meant for the very old, very inexperienced, or children, so if you are looking to do something with 200 of your best friends for a 15 minute block of time, then this pass is a good option. We aren't that type of travelers so everything was pretty underwhelming.

We wish that we would have rented kayaks for each of the lakes, walked to the glacier, and skipped everything else. The gondola was interesting, but again, there are a ton of people up there with you at all times. Same with the sky bridge, which was actually so crowded that you couldn't even stand out there and enjoy the view.

The lake tours were really just rides out to the middle of the lake while being entertained by a guide, and then you ride back. It is pleasant for sure, but you don't learn much and near Spirit Isle they allot 15 minutes for picture taking before you get back on the boat for your ride back. You can kayak that trip in 3 hours and have peace and quiet, which would have been a much better way to engage with the back country.

As for the views at the gondola and elsewhere, make sure you check the smoke map before you book anything. We didn't even end up going to Golden because the smoke was so bad, and when I asked various Pursuit employees and others about how often there is an issue with smoke they all laughed and said that this is really an annual thing and you should expect to have impaired views during the summer depending on the wind that day.

In summary, I would do the lake tours again when I am 95 years old and not looking to have much adventure in my life, but would pass on the rest. Until then I will just stick to hiking any of the hundreds of awesome trails in the national parks and use an app as...

ALERT: DO NOT TRUST YOUR LIFE WITH THESE HIGHLY INCOMPETENT PEOPLE!

On Monday August 7th, more than 300 people were stranded at the top of Sulphur Mountain waiting for the gondola to be fixed. The whole handling of the situation was one complete mess. I have never seen such incompetent people who are responsible for so many lives.

Due to power outage, Banff Gondola stopped working sometime around 8:30pm. Hundreds of people were waiting on the lines with infants, young kids and elderly spread all over. There were so many things wrong about this whole thing that I don’t think I can fit all that into a single post. But some of the critical ones. Let me also say this, I am not to dramatize the incident but just try to write my perspective as unbiased as possible.

*No Evacuation Plan: These people have no idea how to handle a crisis and evacuate the facility in case of an emergency. Now, this wasn’t a life threatening emergency for most people except some who needed critical medications. But as 300+ people were just waiting for an answer for hours, there wasn’t a single supervisor or a person with authority to provide a clear answer as to how all these people would go down. All we heard was “we don’t know, we are working on it”. Having no clear answer from anyone and not seeing a single supervisor to explain what is going on was absolutely unbelievable. We were first told it was the gondola, then gondola was fixed but it was the weather and after the weather cleared it was the gondola again. So much unclarity mixed with lies and the answer changed depending on who you asked.

*RESCUE TEAM: Little before the midnight a team of rescue operators came up. If you think you are safe when you see people with full gear, think again. These guys were even more incompetent. For 2-3 hours, all they did was to walk around and try to calm people down. They had no plan and no actual idea how to handle the situation. Around 2 am they said able people who want to hike down can hike with them. And most astonishingly, they told us they didn’t even have bear sprays and we would go at our own risk. I asked them what if this was a fire, what would be the rescue plan and they said they didn’t know!!!! Just mind-boggling!

So we hiked down at 2:30 am with a group of ~100 people for 2 hours (3.5 miles) relying each other rather than officials in complete darkness holding each other, kids etc.

*CARELESS MANAGEMENT: Now you would think that in a situation like this there would be at least some emergency vehicles waiting at the ground level. There was absolutely no one!!! No police, no ambulance, no one from the operating company’s management. I guess 300+ people weren’t enough to grant some officials would get out of their warm bed.

I will end the post here to give you a picture of how much these people care about their guests!

I love Banff, hiked the Sulphur Mountain before. It is a breathtaking place but rely on yourself and plan to hike rather than spending hundreds of dollars on the gondola and...

We just took the Rocky Mountaineer Journey Into the Clouds and the only "dark clouds" we encountered was the Brewster Travel computer system. A true nightmare.

After booking multiple side trips through Rocky Mountaineer we received vouchers that had to be exchanged for actual tickets from Brewster. We started doing so in Jaspar and after the two women behind the computer struggled with our order for 20 minutes, they printed out our tickets (8 times). Even with that, the correct "time stamp" didn't print, so they hand-wrote the times for our upcoming trip on the Glacier Adventure, assuring us all would work fine. We got to Glacier Adventure and they said the hand-written tickets weren't sufficient. After the two agents (again) battled with their computer for no less than 15 minutes, they printed our time stamp, which we took and got into line. When boarding time came, the worker scanned our ticket and guess what -- it didn't scan! We had to go back to the counter to the same women, who again fought with the computer as the group behind us left to get on the bus. Finally, they were able to print a ticket that actually worked.

Next we went to the Brewster HQ in Banff to make a change to our Gondola ticket, which they were very nice to do, but then struggled to print out time stamp again. After explaining that "there are two systems that don't always agree," they printed our tickets. Guess what? We got to the Gondola ride and the tickets didn't work. Again, had to wait as the agent worked on the computer to print the magic version that would actually work.

I don't know what to advise you to do, other than to make sure you have plenty of time set aside to have your tickets printed. Meantime, I pleaded with Brewster to fix their computer system. It was the only dark cloud on an otherwise...