Chichen Itza Full day tour with buffet

Tour bus didn't come to hotel lobby entrance for pickup. They asked us to meet outside at the road near security gate. It was a long walk for us. Tour guide while speaking in English was mostly speaking in Spanish. He was speaking so fast and was inserting English sentences in between Spanish rather translating it in chunk. So it was very hard to understand. Lunch place that they took us was an open area with no AC. It was too hot. We were sweating while eating. Guide at Chichen itza was good though. Overall it wasn't a pleasant tour and will not recommend.

Great experience. Knowledgeable guides and comfortable ride on bus (but be prepared for a long ride from puerto morales)

I could not go because the tour said they came to pick me up, and I was not there. However, they came at 6 a.m., but my time was 7 a.m. I called the person in charge, and he was very rude. All he kept saying to me was, "No show, no refund, no show, no refund." I tried to explain that the app said 7 a.m., and he would not listen.

Don’t be scammed by the $42 discount price for this excursion. It’s actually more than that, you only find out after you’ve booked the tour. the conservation fee isn’t the correct price listed on TripAdvisor. After you’ve booked the excursion, your’e told in an email you actually have to pay a different price than what was stated. The tour started off very shaky and uncertain. The driver picked us up in a nicely decorated & spacious van only to drive us out of our resort & then pull over on the side of the road and wait about 10mins(doesn’t communicate with us what we’re waiting for) And we’re told to get out and transfer to another van, that had no company name or anything on it. A slightly beat up white van that smelled like car fumes in the back of the van. This van then took us to a department store where we were just told to line up in the store and pay there. We spent about 30-45mins here waiting for everyone to pay and then were taken to a large bus. You don’t get to choose your seat on the bus, they tell you where to sit and choose which bus you get on, so if you’ve got a bad seat you might not get to see much especially if you’re in the back. The bus ride is very uncomfortable and long (3hrs long) this can be very hard for babies and toddlers. Hell it was exhausting for me as an adult. The bus also had no toilet paper or paper towels to dry your hands A guy talks majority of the ride in part Spanish and part English. Very hard to understand him at times, because he’ll start half a sentence in Spanish and stop and then speak in English and then stop and go back and forth, makes it very confusing to understand at times. It did seem/feel like the Spanish speaking people on the bus were catered to more and seemed to know a lot more of what was going on because the tour guides spoke with them often personally majority of the ride. (But again that’s my perspective) The first stop of the tour was to a little village area to use the restroom/shop for souvenirs / chocolate shop/have lunch and listen to information. I think this part of the tour could have been left out and just go straight to eating lunch. We spent about an 1.5h here I believe. Lunch was great very filling and tasty. Many options to choose from Next we headed to Chichén Itzá finally. It was extremely hot there. An umbrella is a great idea, but again just standing still in the shade I was dripping sweat. it was very interesting and informative. Great time for pics I feel like the tour got much better after lunch. I was regretting booking this excursion after being on the bus for 3hrs straight but it gets better once you go to the stops you expected to see. The cenotes was great The last stop was to vallodin which was a really short stop, we only spent 20-25mins here. Nice little park a lot of the vendors take Apple Pay if you don’t have cash. I would have liked to explore this area a little more. The tour ends around 7:45pm but we didn’t get back to our resort until after 10:30pm and we didn’t have enough time at the last stop to buy dinner, So we had to order room service when we got back to the resort. Overall i would recommend this tour but it needs a bit more organization and better communication about what’s happening. TripAdvisor needs to update their page with correct information before you book. I’d recommend booking the $90 excursion atleast you’ll have a light breakfast included, since you’ll end up paying almost the same price regardless on this tour. Conservation fee should be explained Less time at the first village we should just have lunch and head to the tour sites. We spent too much time there. I gave 3 stars because it was for each excursion the excursions were great. I’d recommend a private tour to this excursion because that bus ride isn’t comfortable for 3hrs.

To sum up my experience with this tour, I will say: DO NOT book this through Viator. You are far better off to go directly with a reputable tour company, where you can go for clarity and to resolve any issues. There were more things wrong with this tour than right. First off, since Viator is the middleman, communication on what is included was not consistent from Viator to the local operator. (On Viator’s site, it states that you will have everything you need for the tour. NOT true) After verifying what fees I was responsible for well in advance of our tour (mind you there were several of us on a friend/family group), we receive an email the day prior stating that we will owe an additional $10 each for the transportation. A few things wrong with this: 1. The day prior is completely unacceptable given this request was submitted more than a month before our trip 2. This charge came well within the “free cancellation” window, leaving us no choice but to accept whatever charges to avoid losing our money on the tour and 3. The morning of the tour, local operators actually tried collecting $15pp instead of the $10. Our group refused and they accepted the $10, although later on they credited us back for this after complaining. Speaking of morning of, the tour operators were 1 HOUR late to pick up the group. They said 6:30am and came at 7:30am, which meant we were all up earlier then we needed to be and we missed breakfast because that opened at 7 and we all were told to be in the lobby at 6:30 for pickup. Once on the bus, we were driven 45 minutes south to playa del carmen to pick up another group before coming 45 minutes back to where we were picked up to start on our journey to the first stop on our tour, which was the cenote. Complete and utter waste of time! While on the bus, the operators told everyone that if they wanted any bottled water, they would have to spend $15 pp for the day. Oh, and life jackets at the cenote (a requirement) were $3.00pp. Lastly, the buffet lunch that was included did NOT include drinks..yep, had to buy those too…and, they tried taking away the water you may have brought with you so as to force you to buy their drinks. Completely ridiculous…very nickel and dime behavior. Because we were already behind schedule due to being driven south and then north again, the operators tried cutting short the time at each of our stops to make up for their lack of planning and judgement. Our group kindly reminded them of the time that we were told (and paid for) for the tour stops. The operators reluctantly relented with the exception of the last stop on the tour (Villadolid). There, we were supposed to have an hour and were given 20 minutes. Also, beware of them asking you to fill out a card for a Mayan calendar…what they don’t clarify is that if you fill them out and give them to the operator, it is like an agreement to buy the calendar, which is $28 per calendar. Everyone was so incredibly frustrated and exhausted from the behavior of the operators on this tour. Although the sites were great to see, I cannot emphasize enough to avoid booking through Viator for this one in the future..you don’t know the operators and at the end of the day, all they care about is the money. Our group finally arrived back at the hotel at about 9:45pm, well past when we were supposed to be back, and too late for even the buffet for dinner, which closed at 10pm. Upon complaining to Viator about our experience, all we heard back was “sorry this happened, we can’t refund any of the tour back but we hope you’ll consider booking with us again”. Yeah, that would be an ABSOLUTELY NOT!!