US
20-35 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Choose another company
The Good: The safaris were incredible. Ngorongoro in particular was amazing. Lots of wildlife. We were worried about traveling during the “off” wet season, but it was amazing. Best safari so far in all of Africa. Keep in mind, the safari host is subcontracted.
The Bad: Communication before and during the tour was abysmal. We had no idea what was going on at any time and David did a poor job of confirming plans. We had to have backup plans upon arrival at the airport because we weren’t even sure if we were going to be picked up due to a lack of communication and confirmation.
The Ugly: Fig Tree Lodge, the Eco Lodge with which Dancing Simba contracts several stays, is pretty terrible. Mama Pia is a delight, but the rest of the staff are rude and it feels like a scam. A dirty one at that. Several of the tours felt the same way, including the coffee tour near Materuni Falls, Mto Wa Mbu, and the Maasai people nearby.
All in all, we made the best of it, but Dancing Simba was absolutely not the catalyst that made this trip amazing. We’ve traveled over 75 countries and have done many safaris and weeklong tours with guides. Highly encourage you to do your homework and book this type of trip with someone else, especially at this cost.
PL
35-50 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Worst comparing to others
We have spend 4 days in Masai Mara with this company and it was worst of all game drives we had during stay in Africa.
- poor english of driver,couldn't cath a sense of the sentences
-car was not prepared for rain season( broken wipers, lack of solid tow rope, we were supposed to push car in mud)
- we were charged for tickets which never been paid ( company is cooperating on the side with gate keepers) however we received our game driver.The feeling we've been tricked was painful.Lies in your face. Plus was the food and they were on time with schedule.
To sum up -find someone cheaper or pay all tickets on your own.
They were the worst comparing to three other companies we tried during our stay in Africa.
US
65+ years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Dishonest
The tour was great. However the agent I worked with from corporate office kept telling me one thing and changing it where I paid more and received less. She even changed the contract of what I signed. I was promised three meals plus much more and did not receive it. I have my original contract and all of our emails and conversations. BUYER BEWARE--DISHONEST. The properies in Capetown were nice but in need of repair. Stillness Manor: Broken mirrors, issues with water, mold around showers, and load share
issues every day (no lanterns or emergency lamps). Shark Bay was nice. Belle Maroc was a nice location. The people on site And the driver were great. Please make sure you get everything in writing from them and then DO NOT SIGN ANY NEW ADDENDUMS, CANCEL IF YOU MUST TO SAVE BEING SCAMMED, BUT DO NOT SIGN ANYTHING AFTER THE INITUAL CONTRACT. The Victoria Falls portion was great!
IE
35-50 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Overpriced for what you get
TLDR: Overpriced for what you get.
Starting with the good part, company was very accomodating since our flight got cancelled and we could change our safari from 4 to 3 days and all people working there were very nice.
Now, it's horribly overpriced given the quality of the accomodation and food received. Tremisana lodge is old, not very well maintained and just clean enough. The food was very dissapointing, one of us was vegetarian and the options given were "well, you just don't eat the meat, eat everything else", that's by all means not catering for vegetarians. We were lucky we had some food with us because portions were quite small, also lunch not included in the package.
Safari itself is ok but streamlined for tourists, there's an adjacent private reserve were they take you twice to see some lions. It's basically a big private zoo but not at all a safari experience. The full day in Kruger park is more real, nice 4x4 jeeps to travel around and we got to see some animals but the fact that these vehicles travel alone and without radio leaves you to your own luck finding animals (in other safaris cars would talk to each other if they see something).
Given South Africa prices, ~1200 EURO for 2 nights accomodation and a bit of safari this is hugely overpriced.
US
50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Review about Lake Manyara National Park by Gordon Lucas
Park is very forested, so much harder to see wildlife. And high water levels in the lake restricted access to lake viewing
SG
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Inattentive to details and lack of commitment to deliver
We booked a total of 11d 10n trip with MOAFRIKA.
Overall experience was acceptable but there are a lot of rooms for improvement in terms of service level to suffice the basic expectation of a customer.
communication, commitment, attentiveness and etc.
1) booked on full day Soweto tour 4 months ago but was informed 1 day before the tour that apartheid museum is closed on Tuesday. Ended up not able to visit the museum. Was told that we could try make up for it on other days after the safari but no follow up from MOAFRIKA at all. The opening of the museum should have been known to any local tour operator. How could this even possibility overlooked?
2) for our trip to green field lodge, MOAFRIKA sublet us on other transport company which had 4 more other stops to drop off from south before us at north. Our overall transport duration from joburg airport to Greenfire gate took us approx. 10hours. 0700 - 1700hrs. This leaded us to miss our afternoon game drive at 1530hrs. The driver/ MOAFRIKA should already know that this route the van is taking will not get us to Greenfire in time. This could be avoided if driver could drop us first at north before routing down south to drop others.
The transfer from Greenfire gate to Greenfire lodge takes 45mins. MOAFRIKA should have known and find us a transport to bring us there within 7hours which means it would be a direct transfer in order for us to reach the gate by 1400HRS to be transferred into Greenfire lodge, checked in and ready for the game drive.
I had to personally inform MOAFRIKA that we are not going to make it in time and all I get was ok, I will inform the lodge. No effort to try on compensating this loss caused by their miss planning.
3) photos of the room at tremisan game lodge safari presented to us in quotation is misleading. We were allocated a small room as compared to the one we were presented when receiving the quotation. Feed-backed to MOAFRIKA and was informed that the receptionist will try to make adjustment for us. Went to the receptionist to follow up on next morning. Disappointed to hear: “at the moment, we are very full. I’ll try my best to change the room but no promise. All my guest booked a year in advance. If you have specific room, you need to let us know. “
Well, all we are asking is only what we have been offered before and nothing more. But she sounded that it’s our fault and we should be shortchanged due to her being full.
4) there is no proactiveness from MOAFRIKA to share driver/ PIC contact detail 1 day prior to any trip. I had to follow up on my own and at times I had to wait for them to get back.
RO
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Review about Serengeti National Park by Dragos Dumitrescu
Too vast, bad roads, impossible to come close to animals
NG
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Nairobi Park 1/2 day tour----The Gilligan's Island 3 hour tour.
It was advertised as a 4-5 hour tour, it was less than 3 hours in the park.
Our expectations were not high so the bar was set low and they couldn't even meet that.
After everyone was picked up at 1:30 we were told "all the animals are asleep now and the best time to start is 3 pm." So to kill time we drive to a small souvenir shop/snack place for about an hour.
First question is if there nothing to see until 3 then why not pick us up at 2:30 instead of 1:30? Obvious answer---to take us to some place to spend money where I suspect the driver and/or company is getting a kickback. THIS ANNOYED ALL THE PASSENGERS (we talked about it) since it was very obvious what was going on.
So we get to the park entrance at 3 and by the time everyone has paid the entrance fee we head in around 3:20. Funny thing is there were numerous vehicles in the park already and we pass a few LEAVING. Didn't they know the animals were all asleep when they arrived a few hours ago? lol.
Long story short what we saw was: Virtually nothing, certainly nothing of interest until 30/40 min. in when we saw a pride of lions sleeping (they should be awake, don't they know what time it is?). There were long stretches of nothing but in the end did see both black (2) and white (2) rhinos, lots of zebras and 3 giraffes only because we happen to see them far off and luckily they were headed in our direction so we stopped and waited. We pass that area 30 min. earlier or later and we don't see them. We also saw lots of Impala, one Ostrich, a couple of hartebeest and 3 hyenas.
They tell you up front in their ads there are no elephants so we knew that.
All we saw of the "big 5" was Lions and Rhinos so no leopards or buffalo either. Also no cheetahs, wildebeast, Hippos, baboons or crocodiles or well....anything else. Of course there's luck involved and no one should expect to see everything but this was pathetic. We headed out of the park before 6 pm so the tour was less then 3 hours long.
The whole thing was more like a Gilligan's Island 3 hour tour gone wrong then an interesting African safari of any kind.
CA
50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Disappointing
A few days before leaving they said we were going from Ashnil Samburu camp tents to a lodge, saying it was an upgrade,NOT. They never told us why. We then went to Ashnil and asked people staying there when they booked and it was about 6 months later than us. They had 4 tents still available but said they were for last minute bookings. All 6 of us are not impressed. Guess they threw us under the bus for either being Canadian or not paying as much as some others. We will never use them again.
MK
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Not bad not terrible.
Too many added costs to the tour. The basically give a driver that knows bits and pieces about animals and he just drives you like a taxi driver from place A to place B. No value for money for some of the "attractions" we saw.