Rainbow Bridge Toll Gate — Local services in City of Niagara Falls

Well this, referring to the whole immigration centre thing, was truly a horrible experience in an otherwise pleasant holiday.

So I'm in a British Family, we had spent some time in New York City for the first part of a holiday and then flew to Toronto airport for the next part, to drive down to Niagara (Canada) for the second part of the holiday in the very nice Hilton Hotel. And of course, being in Niagara, we also wanted to check out the American side to the falls, as it seemed to be less busy and more like a nature park place. All seemed good crossing the ironically pleasant named 'Rainbow Bridge'. It was a little slow moving but seemed fine. Then we got to the toll part, got asked some (a lot of) questions and had to show various things. It was annoying but didn't take excessively long. At this point, we thought we were in the clear.

BUT NO. We were instead told to park our car and head to the immigration service place. This is the place where, bearing in mind this was around a year ago so I don't fully remember, we waited for around an hour and a half, possibly more in this waiting room with lots of other people tolerating the same thing. It was ridiculous! With little explanation, we were essentially being held prisoner for an unaccounted-for 2 hours total (which put a significant strain on what we could do that day) waiting without being allowed technology and basically anything that passes time joyously. It was horrific. People were VERY SLOWLY being asked to enter the office to give finger prints, be asked all of the same 'Murica security questions and whatnot, just so we could stay in their precious 'land of the free' for just ONE DAY, bearing in mind that we had just been in NYC anyway.

Ultimately, I can appreciate the concern over security in America. It was a completely different border situation going into the Canada side but I guess they face less problems with homeland security. BUT most staff were quite rude and did little to explain why we were there and how much time they wanted to take from us. Anyway it just really sucked, so PLEASE BE AWARE if you are staying in the Canada side, crossing over to America is...

Some of the rudest immigration controls I have ever met in my life and I've been to Newark Airport. My brother and I went to Niagara Falls with passports and applicable visas and things went smoothly at first (although they shouted at my brother rudely for using his phone to check the map whilst we were waiting in line even though they had no signs as to this no phone policy in site? anyways, I could let that slide). We walked through the exiting from the back left as that seemed to be the only exit. There was a Korean girl in front of us who had exited the same way and she was talking to the parking attendant/border service person there. She was turning back and she said that we had to go back because we had exited from the wrong exit (fair enough but again there had been no signs or directions from staff). So we start turning back too but the security person shouted us over looking furious. He jabbed his finger in our faces saying "HEY, where do you think you're going - are you with her?" I said "no, we came out the wrong exit, we're going back now" and he absolutely lost it and devolved into a rant. He shouted at us for a good minute in a rude tone "Right. You need to go back. Go through that door." He was literally turning red in the face? I was just thinking "yeah, we got that much, the girl already told us". I honestly thought we were going to get in a fight because this man had issues. When we got back to the immigration we had to go through again and I told him about how we had gone through the wrong door. The clerk had seen us go through but he was not satisfied when I showed him the stamps in my passport and the fact that we had been checked. Seemed highly suspicious of us and then talked to his colleague instead of to us, asking if he had checked us properly. The Canadian side was fine. I had recently renewed a student visa and was carrying both with me just in case and she said I can't have two student visas. She took my personal visa document and didn't return it to me even though I would have liked to keep it?? I hate border crossing. It's a strange world where common sense or manners...

Amazing views, but sadly an absolutely horrendous experience crossing from the Canadian to US side. I've crossed many international borders and I've never known anything like it. The border guard treated me like a criminal for a good 10 minutes asking me endless questions about how I was affording my trip, why I didn't (and I quote), "just stay in Canada" and even stretching too, "how are you washing your clothes", (a comment on the size of the backpack I was traveling with), just unbelievable! I am a British citizen and had travelled from new York to Toronto before catching the train down to Niagara falls, a perfectly reasonable thing to do you might think? But apparently not! He insisted on looking at my belongings (for some reason unbeknown to me) and scrutinized every detail of my itinerary as if he didn't believe a word I was saying. As you can tell I'm still furious about the encounter which spoilt the end to an otherwise brilliant holiday in the US; I understand border control have a job to do but the lack of respect and courtesy this officer had was...