We booked a private tour of Paris, hoping to hit all of the major sites (eiffel, latin quarter, St. Chappel, Notre Dame, Montamarte, Arch De Triumph) in a single day. We have done many private tours in our travels, and this did not meet our expectations. The tour is rather expensive and for that kind of price we expected customizations (as promised in email), and for them to arrange everything prebooked so that we could see as much as possible. What it turned out to be, was basically a driver, and a tour guide who waits with you in the non-reservation line for an hour+ in the hot sun. Then they don't even go into the sites that require payment with you! I could have saved 800 euros and booked Uber and paid my own admission to venues and it would have been basically the same experience. For the Eifel tower, they pawned us off onto a different company's group tour, which actually had a great guide. We asked on email to upgrade to the top of the Eifel tower, months before our trip and they didn't arrange it (I could have easily booked it myself as when I sent the request there was plenty of availability, but foolishly assumed they would take care of it, you know because you pay them almost $2000 for a tour...) At St Chappelle, we had to wait over an hour in 36 C sun, while countless tour groups, with real guides went it, along with multiple different pre-arranged timeslots, because as our guide said, they don't prebook tickets. That's totally unacceptable! Ditto for Notre Dame, no special arrangements, just standard queue. We didn't want to do one of the activities and asked on email to swap it out for a catacombs tour, but day of our tour guide was surprised by this and said "ohh those tickets are hard to get, we can't go". The guide himself was nice, but had limited knowledge of most things outside of the Napoleon wars. He also wasn't super engaging with our kids or very fun. We could have overlooked that if they had actually properly arranged tours and did what we asked for.
You were served by our Mercedes minivan with an experienced driver and our guide David, who has received mostly 5-star reviews. All planned visits were completed and we are pleased that you appreciated the efforts of your guide. Unfortunately, some additional requests could not be accommodated. We also recognize that keeping 4 children of different ages engaged throughout a full day of sightseeing can be challenging. We disagree with several aspects of your account, as the services provided were consistent with the agreed itinerary.
