Poor communication
I was dealing with one lady by the name Faith Kaluai,first she sends me a quotation valid for a month,I was to get back to her on my travel dates then two days later she sends me a mail and tell me it was subject to availability and sends me another quotation..i call her wanting to make my bookings on the new quotations sent to me but she doesn't pick up my call..she later sends me a whatsapp message asking me what i have decided nearly a week after.surely bonfire how are you supposed to win people's trust if you can't handle your customers properly?
AE
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Very disappointed
In view of the increasing popularity of online reviews I decided to go with magical retreat safaris. I cannot convey how disgusting experience we had on those 10 days. Hotels were not good and the driver (Anthony) one of the laziest I have ever seen in my life. Didn’t go by the itinerary And he picked us at around 9AM for a early morning game drive
CA
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Parks and wildlife were great, tour operator was not
I booked a 6D/5N with Meru Slopes, reading great reviews on SafariBookings.com.
I was dismayed to find out that they had shuffled me into a different company's safari, for unknown reason. This group was called Arunga Expeditions.
The guide spoke maybe 100 words the entire safari, we had battery issues with the LandCruiser, the lunch boxes were awful (dry muffin + banana + FOUR pieces of plain bread + juice box), and we were always rushed. When we would stop at say a large pride of lions and want to spend 5-10 minutes, the guide would try and start driving away after 1 minute to find something else. We'd have to ask him to stop so we can stay and watch the lion and actually take photos. He was never happy with this and often very rude. Often we'd leave something like this after 2 minutes and not see anything as spectacular the rest of the day. He'd mutter something like "many more lions later". The itinerary was to have FULL safari days at certain spots (Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro, Serengeti) but this only meant 4 - 5 hours to the guide. He would sleep in, start slow, and end early, so he could take off from the campsite and go drink a couple beers and watch football somewhere. We were always the last vehicle out in the morning and first ones back. The itinerary had a full day booked at Ngorongoro but we were finished BEFORE lunch time. How does this work?
DE
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Poor guides, poor itinerary, mechanical problems
My husband and I did a 2 week/3 country East Africa tour, and Essenia was responsible for 5 days in Tanzania. This portion of our trip really did not meet our expectations in any category: itinerary, lodges, customer service and especially driver/guides. We had a lot of trouble communicating with our first guide. English comprehension problems meant we could not easily ask questions about the schedule, animals, or general cultural questions. During game drives we had a lot of trouble requesting him to stop in time to see animals, he did not know the birds or trees, and even misidentified a monkey as a species which doesn't live in Tanzania! After an upsetting first day of game drives, we asked to change guides. Essenia did not seem to take the problems very seriously, and we had to really push them to find someone else.
The next day, our safari truck was leaking gas and we stopped at a garage to have it looked at. 40 minutes down the road the dashboard suddenly started smoking heavily. Just as we bailed out of the car, a call came that they had found a new driver and he was waiting for us with a different car an hour down the road - lucky timing, I am not sure what would have happened if we hadn't already requested a new guide! After a comedy of errors where we waited an hour for the new driver to pick us up while he waited for us to come to him, we flagged down a passing car from another company and hitchhiked to the new driver. Between morning delays to call customer service, mechanical issues and bad coordination we basically lost this entire day of our trip - quite frustrating.
The new guide was better than the first one. I can say he was competent, but no where near the quality of driver/guides we had on other legs of the trip. For example: he kept telling us stories about customers who tried to make requests which he thought were a bad idea ("tried to do his job of guiding") and to show them that they were wrong, he would let them have a really bad experience (ie drive slowly and hit all the bumps on a road) until they apologized and begged him to do it his way after all. We tried to be careful not to upset him so that we didn't have an experience like that.
We also had problems with the overall itinerary/planning, especially scheduling transit time in the morning when animals are more active and game drives in the mid afternoon heat when animals are there but not doing much. It turns out all 4 lodges were actually owned by the same hotel chain. Though they were nice properties, we would have preferred to experience more variety and local flavor - and not the same buffet for every breakfast/lunch box/dinner! These two issues I should have paid closer attention to before booking, when I could have asked for changes. Essenia never followed up with us directly during or after the trip. We did see lots of animals, there are plenty in Tanzania so we didn't feel this was due to any special skills of our guide. In summary: Essenia really let us down and I would strictly avoid doing business with them.
SG
50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Review about Lake Mburo National Park by Jasmine Oh
There is nothing much at Lake Mburo National Park.
NZ
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Difficult driver changed the plan
The pre-tour booking was very efficient. The tour was simple to book, we were provided great options for accommodation and we were given clear level of detail. However, unfortunately our experience with the driver was far from positive. We had booked a full game drive, plus two game drives, but in reality, we were given a full day + 2 hours. The driver was then disagreeing with us on the second half day, and said that we had to get back to Nairobi. We are not usually confrontational people, but we felt that it was really unfair to not finish the agreed itinerary. This made us feel really uncomfortable as we didn't want to be disagreeing on the plan, however, we had flown such a long way for these three days and we really wanted to spend our agreed time in the park. The driver begrudgingly agreed to take us back into the park, but we only spent 2 hours there, rather than the half day. What really polished it off was on our way home, we stopped to fill up the tyres and one of our passengers got out to use the rest room. Before the passenger even got back into the car, the driver started driving out of the petrol station! He was very rude, didn't make an effort to learn our names and made it apparent that he didn't want to be hosting the trip. He was also making multiple personal phone calls throughout the trip. It was really very disappointing.
US
65+ years of age | Experience level: first safari
Awesome National Parks and Wildlife
I spent one day in Nairobi, and that was enough. The city was crowed and overrun with litter. You couldn’t step out of your hotel without being set upon by several pushy men wanting to be your “ guide”. Traveling through the villages to the various parks and lake areas you saw the trash and liter everywhere. I realize it’s a poor country but picking up your trash doesn’t cost anything.
The parks and wildlife were completely different. Clean and it seemed, well guarded, the wildlife and scenery were amazing. We have always wanted to see the animals in their natural habitat and we weren’t disappointed. They were abundant and it was amazing to see them wander freely in their natural environment. The safari experience was everything we hoped it would be.
US
50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
African Safari
We were party of 14 adults and had two SUV from this company. The drivers were excellent in terms of their services and demeanors But we were given one relatively new vehicle and other one was very old. One of our vehicle broke down twice once in Masai Mara and second time in Serengati national park. The ride was very rough with broken seats handles and malfunctioning windows.
PLEASE BE CAREFUL IF YOU PLAN TO CHOOSE THIS COMPANY AND ASK FOR A NEW VEHICLE WITH COMFORTABLE SEATS AND WEFI ONBOARD IF POSSIBLE.
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Alex was very accommodating, however the tour guide was incredibly disappointing.
We got very close to a pride of lions, were present at a lion ‘marriage ceremony’ and watched a leopard/cheetah for many hours. Are your guide had a good eye but lacked communication skills, we were not sure where we were going half the time, he would make decisions without informing us or explaining to us. I believe this was because we were 2 young female travellers. Given the amount of money we paid I was highly disappointed at this and it ruined our trip.
ES
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
ACZ tried to change agreed conditions several times
After agreeing on conditions and contracting tour for Amboseli 3 days in lodges, and paying in advance 50%, they contacted to say that it wasn't a lodge but a luxury tent and that a suplement was needed for a lodge. We refused and referred to agreed terms, finally they admitted it would be lodge without suplement.
One or two days before the tour, they called us to let us know that they had problems with the vans, and that they were changing our open-roofed van for a jeep... we refused, and finally got the van as agreed (which is more spacious and permits a full experience).
During the tour, they disturbed us during dinner and argued that they had problems again with vans and proposed to change the safari drive of next day for a visit to a Masaai village. Again we had to refuse, really upset of being bothered by their logistic problems that we are not responsible of.
Last day in the return trip which had lunch included, the driver stopped and told us that the company had given him some money for us to buy food. The amount was ridiculous, so we had to refuse again and as in other tours asked to go to a proper place where the meals are arranged for tourists and we don't need to care about prices.
None of these things happened with other safari tours that we contracted.
Not directly related to ACZ, but to the AA Lodge, we found several cockroaches in the lodge, not only in the bathroom but also inside the sheets. We had to move to a tent that night.
Apart from all of that, we enjoyed Amboseli a lot, and the driver was really nice (in these tours, drivers generally do the hard work in an excellent way and get the less of the money; managers just arrange conditions and pickup the money).