Portland Discovery Land and Sea Tours — Local services in Portland

This tour was just okay. I feel bad saying that because it probably wasn’t the company’s intention. Booking was easy. The trolly was cool, the price was fair, the tour guy Gary was a douche bag. When everyone loaded onto the trolly Gary gave a few housekeeping guidelines. Which included to keep talking / side conversations to a minimum so everyone can hear and enjoy the tour, which I agree is totally reasonable. About 25ish minutes into the tour, a few people where talking to each other, it was nothing disrespectful, loud or distracting to others. Gary made a big deal out of it and started saying things like; if your not interested in hearing what I’m saying I guess I can stop talking and people did pay to hear your conversation they paid to hear me talk about the city of Portland. He didn’t say it sarcastically or joking it was very demeaning almost like scolding children. After that the whole trip changed at least for me and my husband. I just sat quietly in my phone. No one spoke or interacted. The facts that Gary told were dumb and presented as if he was making them up. But that may have been because I was checked out after he made everyone uncomfortable. He also made a few comments that had political undertones that I didn’t appreciate not because they weren’t in favor of my political preference because they were, just because that’s not appropriate. When the tour was over I did not tip Gary or say thank you. Which made me more uncomfortable because that is not like me. I did speak to a few nice ladies at the booking office about the situation.they were very helpful and nice and said they would pass on my concerns with Gary. I want to say that I went on May tours of Maine in days prior and post and they were all wonderful, interactive & informative. I would recommend this tour but make sure you don’t have the...

We had a less than ideal time, but ultimately you cannot go wrong with a Sunset cruise, the views are amazing. Temper expectations for service. If you are not the first 100 in line, strongly consider rebooking for a different day.

Captain 1/1: we did not hit anything

Bartender 1/1: was incredibly nice, always had a smile and was more than happy to give some local recommendations while preparing our drinks.

Staff 0/1: Staff told customers they could not go upstairs to sit, even though capacity had not actually been met. (Confirmed this with the blonde girl working the steps). Thankfully, after everyone had boarded she was nowhere to be found the entire cruise, so all 120 or so people people were up on the top deck getting the views they paid for.

Experience/narration: 0/1 - Dry, and had 15-20 minute gaps of silence. Personally felt like this was the narrators first time reading the script as he sounded incredibly unsure of the facts of the tour.

Boat 0/1 - boat was dirty, because we could not go upstairs due to lack of seats to support their 100 person max. (More like lack of the staff asking multiple family's of 2-3 to more closer together to allow more people to fit on the benches made for 5). Unfortunately, our pictures turned out just okay, due to the windows being covered in wash from previous trips. The team made no effort to wipe them knowing they had booked too many people to fit everyone up top. Thankfully, after the start this crew member disappeared and nobody on staff was maintaining the boat rules.

All in all we made the best of the trip and views. I learned a valuable lesson about just booking with the first result aka "sponsored" ads. I sincerely hope this can be used constructively to help enhance the experience for...

As I approached the trolly location I was surprised by the lack of parking. I only had about 20 minutes before the start of the tour. Feeling forced into it, I pulled into a large public parking lot. With a two hour tour ahead of me, I asked where their restroom facility was. No such thing existed was the answer. They suggested the closest one was down a couple blocks across the street in a Starbucks coffee shop.

Not a fan of overpriced coffee and aware of Starbucks corporate strategy of reintroducing the pay toilet, I was sorry to hear this. But, with time running out, I had little choice. Sure enough it cost me.

The trolly tour started and, comparing it to other city tours, I was very disappointed. A lot of shopping and restaurant information and only superficial comments on historical topics.

As the tour ended my attention turned to my parking situation. I learned that the lot charged over $10 an hour, the tour (+restroom time) had been stretched to more than 3 hours, so I was looking at something north of $30. Now the owner of the parking lot also ran a restaurant (at the far end of the lot) and I was told if I ate there they would validate my ticket to reduce the cost of the parking.

But at this point I started to suspect that this trolley operation, next to the parking lot that was connected to the restaurant, did not care about creating a satisfied repeat customer. So I decided to accept my loss (I was more than $150 under water). I was sure that stopping at the restaurant would only increase my losses and that escaping with my car and the money I had left was...