Niagara Fun Tours — Local services in Niagara Falls

If you are looking for a “true” wine tour, then this is not the trip for you! When booking, the itinerary had listed 4 wineries with tours, lunch and food paired tastings, great! Then, when checking the itinerary day before trip.. list was changed. Day of, we got picked up and we were already running 30m-1hr behind. No food, gum or drink - including water, allowed on bus. Bathroom on bus “out of service”. Only picked up people from first and second stop, never went to the last pick up area, where in reading previous reviews people were waiting. Then, when we boarded the bus once again list was changed - however one place we couldn’t even go to due to power failure, so they rushed to find somewhere else for us to go. Stop 1 was Vieni, it was the most enjoyable experience. Felt like a real, formal tasting. 2nd stop was Puddicombe, this was by far the worst on the list. It was also where we were to have lunch. Small portions, food coming from crockpots sitting all day, expensive. Wine tasting was run by what seemed like a 16 year old. Plastic cups for tasting, never rinsed in between. Wine was not good here, they were more so promoting their ciders. They also split the bus into groups, one would eat first and other would drink first. If you ate first you were left to eat/shop but you wouldn’t even know if you liked what you were buying as you didn’t try it yet. This was also a park for kids and there were young kids and babies all over the place. Some people in the group were even saying this stop shouldn’t have counted. 3rd place was Cornerstone. It was ok. It is very small up and coming. Wine was alright, tasting was merely just a couple drops of wine in the glass. Same glass used, never rinsed. After this we drove back into the city. We were told no direction of where we were going and thought we were going home as nothing more had been mentioned about a new 4th stop. We were also very behind on schedule. Then we pulled into a parking lot of a random bar in town, Taps Brewery. It was just your average sports bar. They had a very young girl give us 2 beer samples at the entrance (which tasted horrible and had no flavour). Nothing was explained to us by anyone. The group just sat at tables talking amongst each other. There was really no point in going to this place and really was just a waste of time. Some people actually left the tour when we got to this stop and walked back into the city instead of waiting for the bus to take us back. At no point were we given a tour of the facilities, and we never sampled any cheese, meats, chocolates etc with any of the tastings. Both had been mentioned in the itinerary description when I booked the trip. At the end of the day we felt it was rushed, boring, and just not a good experience at all. All we did was drive around, taste a few drinks and then be sent to the shops to buy product. I have never been one to write a review like this and usually just bite my tongue, but this felt like an absolute rip off waste of a day. Truly disappointing and dissatisfying. Tour was nothing as described. This event is run by the NIagara Fun Tours. Driver was great, a jokester and seemed to have some good facts about the...

Myself and 3 others did the Niagara wine tour on July 3. 4 pickup locations were specified but they changed these at the last minute forcing me to drive all the way from Hamilton into Niagara Falls instead of being picked up on the QEW around Vineland. The 4 wineries to be visited were not published ahead of time. As it turns out, we did Joseph's (NOTL) and then came pretty much all the way home for me to Puddicombe's at the Fifty Road exit. I had asked if seating could be reserved for my Mom at the front of the bus and her walker stored underneath and was assured this wouldn't be an issue. Turns out the bus is a broken down old school bus so there was no storage underneath so the walker had to be lugged up the stairs and stored on a spare seat behind us. We had to take care of this ourselves with little to no help from the driver. The seating on the bus was very uncomfortable and with no air conditioning, the driver just kept opening the door of the school bus and we're zooming down the highway. The wineries weren't great. I planned on buying 12 bottles of wine. I bought 3 at Josephs (turned out this was the best one in my opinion) and nothing else after that. The tasting at Puddicombe's was the worst. The tastings weren't bad but the people there were not friendly at all. You only got 2 little tastings. We had to practically beg to get a small sample of the pear cider that they were featuring. Legends probably had the most affordable wines (but not necessarily the best tasting). The girls in the wine shop were so pushy they turned us right off. Atlantis was definitely the most unique experience and had the most tastings (just a small sip of 11 different things but with these being the equivalent of ice wines, that was more than enough). They suggested lots of ways to serve their products but at $40 a small bottle, I wasn't interested in using their wines as drizzle on salads, etc. I would highly recommend a stop here though. Really cool !! We put many miles on that hot, uncomfortable school bus that day. Such a shame as there are so many great wineries in the region that they could have cut down on so much of that travel. Luckily it was a good group of people on the bus. The driver was a bit of a nutcase but harmless. His jokes were lame and he must suffer from back issues (no wonder considering the shape of the bus) because he drove half sitting in his seat / half kneeling on the ground. I didn't feel safe so I tried to avoid watching him. Bottom line, I wouldn't recommend this tour company. They have no qualms about changing things at the last minute and don't care who they inconvenience. They don't provide you with enough information (no mention of the school bus which they should have when I asked about storing...

Started off with driver (Tyler) showing up right at 11 - which is fine, I just expected to have some time to get situated before he peeled off.

He started off as a fun tour guide. Told us where he would be parked - explained to us the rules of open liquor, but suggested we could drink within reason, and explained to some passengers he was excited for our next stop because it was next to McDonald's and he was hungover off vodka red bull from the night before. Over share? Yeah. I'd say.

Then things started to get weird. All of sudden we were feeling very rushed. For instance - we had left our original pick up point about 10-15 mins late due to Tyler not being on time, and it created a very rushed feeling throughout the day. The poor guy at Konzelmann basically made us chug our wine to allow time to visit the boutique. We get to our last winery - FINALLY A KITCHEN!!! When some of our guest went to order a basket of French fries, Tyler yelled at them stating "we don't have enough time for this." And to "cancel your order out of respect. This is a business and they don't expect a bus tour here on a Monday!" Well that's strange because everywhere else we went that day expected us!?

After he made a bunch of people very uncomfortable, I noticed many of the group walking around with French fries, yet Tyler was nowhere to be found...? Ah yes, that's because Tyler had LEFT US AT THE WINERY TO RETURN TO OUR PREVIOUS STOP TO GET HIS VAPE! His vape. Come on. So when we returned back -- LATE and we were all waiting outside, he told us to "shut up" and continued to lecture us about the rules of drinking on the bus. Those rules had been abided by, believe me. It wasn't kids on the bus, we were all 30 years plus. Tyler took it upon himself to throw out our wine -- EVEN FULL BOTTLES WENT MISSING.

When we tried to confront Tyler about this, the group made the decision to cancel our last stop and head directly home, as Tyler had ruined the tour and we felt scared for as safety as he sped down backstreets and slammed his brakes. When we exited the bus and some people tried to ask for refunds, or an explanation he told us to "shut up you dumb f." And to "get the f off his bus." Apparently he's the Managers son and that seems right to me, as I don't believe this kid could hold down a job any other way. I have never experienced anything like this is my life. Your company should be ashamed - and Tyler should be too.

Also, we have most of this on video as that's how upsetting it was.

I will never use this company again. I manage a restaurant in Niagara and will make sure to steer people away from this...