Ruby's Horseback Adventures — Local services in Bryce Canyon City

The short version of my review: my family loved every second of this! My kids (ages 16,14, and 10) had never ridden horses before, and our guides made sure all of us knew how to be good riders and have fun. The trail is a beautiful walk through a pine forest area that leads to the rim of Bryce. Our horses were all sweet and well trained, and our guides took extra care to borrow our phones and take pictures for us as we went.

The long and funny story: My oldest son has Autism. That affects everyone in different ways, but you can kind of imagine my son as a mellow version of Buddy the Elf. I was concerned about this journey because he finds learning new physical tasks very challenging sometimes, and he sometimes feels unsure about riding high up on his bike (somehow hiking Angel's Landing feels totally safer to him than biking on pavement.) But he LOVES animals SO much! He absolutely adores our dog, his classroom pet lizard, you name it.

Somehow, those things were fine. He was able to get right up on his horse and seemed to feel very secure up there. Learning to hold the reins was tricky, but he was figuring it out.

It turns out that what I should have been concerned about is how he spoils his dog rotten. If our dog wants to stop and sniff every single bush in his path for 3 minutes each, my son lets him. If that dog wants to take 13 right turns in a row, he lets him. And of course he feeds tiny bits of all of his meals to that little fluff ball.

So when his horse, Rooster, went off the path to get a small nibble of grass only a few feet out of the gate, my son ignored all of us instructing him to pull the reins in and just giggled. I think with any other rider, Rooster would have very quickly learned that such behavior was not okay, and would have happily stayed in line. But instead, he quickly figured out that his rider actually LOVED his misbehavior. Which made Rooster think "Jackpot!" The rest of the ride, Rooster was taking every chance he could to get a tasty bit of grass or even to walk over small trees and get a belly scratch. We all were repeating the advice our guides were giving my son - "shorten the reins!" "pull him back!" "give him a tap with the stick!" but my son only followed through half heartedly. He was in love, and no matter how much we assured him that Rooster was well fed and well cared for, he was sure. "Rooster needs more snacks!"

Now, how would you feel if you were one of our guides? Did you guess exasperated? Annoyed? I would have guessed that. But I have to tell you, Frank and Kendra could not have been kinder about it. They were 100% patient with him, calmly helping him along. Sometimes they would let that duo have their fun for a minute, but Frank would come along and use his own horse to nudge my son's back in line. Especially along the ridge, they made sure that my son felt safe, happy and confident up there every step of the way. Instead of making us feel like we maybe shouldn't have brought him, they informed us through lots of laughter that "we just love your family!" and "you guys have made our WEEK!"

It was, hands down, the best part of our epic Spring...

This is a place where I felt discriminated and I don’t recommend anyone coming.

It was my first experience and I was very excited about the ride. I didn’t realize that me and my family were all assigned mules instead of horses until I showed my picture to my friends.

I would be fine if they told me earlier that for any reasons they only had mules for all three of us. However, they didn’t say anything about it. I booked a horse ride, not a mule ride. If they were to make any changes from a horse to a mule, they should inform us. What they did to us was very sneaky and unethical!

In addition, I checked the pictures for all the riders on the same trip and guess what - there were only 4 mules and we got 3 of them while the other non-caucasian got the other one. We were the only Asians in that trip and I believe that this is not an coincidence.

They discriminate and deceive people! Don’t ever come here! Worst experience ever.

*We were the left three riders. You can easily tell from the picture that the rider on the right side had a horse while we all got mules!!!

*Reply to the owner’s response below: Fact: There are total 11 riders on that trip, including 1 Caucasian couple with 2 kids(7 and 8 years old), 1 Caucasian couple without kids, 2 black females, and 3 Asians(us). Only 1 black female and 3 Asians got mules. The rest of them all got horses, even those two 7 and 8 years old kids without any riding experience. (I know this because their parents mentioned it during the briefing)

Discrimination - If like you said the mules are safer and better for inexperience riders, why did’t you assign the mules to those two 7 & 8 years old kids??? The fact that you only assigned Asians and black adults mules is an obvious discrimination.

Deception - This is outrageous for you to argue that the difference between a horse and a mule is obvious even for inexperience riders and that you don’t have to at least tell your customers what they are getting. You advertise yourself as horseback adventure yet you think it is okay to use mules as an alternative without any notification? Why don’t you advertise yourself as mule ride? There is no better example of deception than this.

You should be sorry and ashamed of what you did to us rather than making ridiculous excuses!!!!!!!!!

The facts speak...

My family all went for a trail ride today. The horse that I was given had a noticeable limp that caused him to stumble through out the ride I brought this to the attention of the two wranglers who said they were aware that he had a limp and I could talk to the manager about it. I did speak with Frank the manager at the end of the ride who was concerned and assured me they would get him checked out as he was not aware that the horse had a limp prior to today. He was calm and receptive to my concerns and asked if I wanted a refund I said no to put the $ toward the vet. At this point he asked if I wanted to talk with the owner I said ok. The owner arrived in short order and was quite defensive stating that the vet had cleared the horse to be ridden with pain meds and that I was the first person to complain of him stumbling. I unfortunately did not leave the conversation feeling very confident that the horses issues would be addressed as the owner really just seemed more driven to defend his use of using a lame horse in his string. Stating that the weather had been so dusty even sound horses stumble when the ground is so dry??

The young ladies who were wrangling did a great job as well as Frank the Manager but needless to say we wont be returning. I hope my impression of the owner was wrong and he will do right by his horse but that was not the impression I...