Pacific Delights 21 day tour vs. GCT
 

I'm comparing Pacific Delights 21 day tour to China + Yangtze River cruise with the Grand Circle Travel 21 day trip. GCT spends two more days on the river, staying in fewer cities on land.

I presume that Pacific Delights uses nicer, perhaps more centrally located hotels than GCT. I want to be comfortable, and I like good food. People speak highly of both companies. Probably there will be three of us traveling, so one will have to pay the single supplement.

Any ideas of which is better? I'm an active and fit 64, and my mother is 86 and can't walk or stand for long.

More days on the river is not an asset. You don't need more than two days (3 nights) and even that is questionable. The stretch between Chongqing and Yichang has the "highlights." (We took the Yangtze cruise in 2005.) For more info:
http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34682619

Yes, the extra days on the GCT cruise is between Wuhan and Yichang, with nothing to see. It's a waste of time.

The two tours are of quite different class, as well as price range. I see the GCT ones to be about $3,500 including airfare from NYC; compared to almost $5,000 for land only for PD, or $6,000 with airfare. Huge difference.

I didn't want to presume that we'd actually get what we pay for (such a concept!), but it did occur to me that the hotels and food might be better with the Pacific Delights trip. I'm leaning strongly toward that option.

Perhaps someone who has Pacific Delight experience can speak here
but I know GCT will have a demographic more suited for your Mom. Safe to say I think thats
one of their areas of expertise...
dealing with an older traveller
and going just a little bit slower...

It has been several years (we went in October, 2001), but the Pacific Delight China trip still sticks out as the best trip we have ever taken. We went on one of their "gold deluxe" tours, which was limited to 16 people and was quite expensive, even then. The hotels were all 5 star deluxe (can't beat places like the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong). We were in the deluxe suites on the Yangtze River cruise, which were the size of 4 regular cabins. Dinners were pretty much a la carte at the hotels. Transportation was great, including flying us into Hong Kong, instead of the train ride that wastes the day.
There is nothing wrong with GCT, we ran into them on the cruise ship, and the people seemed happy, but other than seeing the same sights, comparing the two is like apples and oranges, as far as the accomodations, etc. I am not one to waste money and travel quite often with Vantage, which is similar to GCT, but trying to compare the GCT China trip to Pacific Delight,is like comparing a Chevy to a Lexus. Only you can decide your budget, but there is a huge difference in the trips.

Pacific Delight has 3 levels
of tours...the lowest level is
quite reasonable...

My very good experience with Pacific Delights and concerns about your mother:

I went solo on Pacific Delights trip last year. Over 20 Europe trips with husband independently, but I was going on my own to China and a tour was necessary. I was very pleased with our hotels, They exceeded my expectations and I wasn't on their most expensive tours. We had a wonderful Beijing tour guide with us for the full trip, adding local guides in Shanghai, Guilin and Xian. This guide made the trip special, always willing to answer every type of question regarding life in China, and always with a great sense of humor. She planned our days in order to avoid the busiest times at popular sites. Only negative was the shopping stops, but I knew upfront this would be so.
I do have serious concerns about your mother. Every stop requires a good amount of walking. The buses park at a distance, there are steps in many places. In Beijing, you stand in the Square, it's a very lengthy walk inside the Forbidden City and you do not exit where you entered. The Summer Palace would have to be skipped altogether, it is all walking. The group cannot stop and wait for her to rest. The Great Wall would be absolutely impossible for her. In Xian, the bus stop is a distance from the buildings housing the soldiers and there really aren't places to sit inside. I would think she'd have to skip most important sites. As I think of each day's activities, and I think almost every one of them would be difficult if not impossible for her. One man in our small group was pretty fit, except for not quite being recovered from hip surgery. He sat on the bus a lot while we toured.
Please reconsider having her go on this trip.

We did a 14 day tour of China (we did not do the extension to Hong Kong) with Pacific Delight Tours in Summer, 2006 and were "delighted" with the tour, hotels, food, and guides. PDT has 3 levels - the economy, the imperial and gold (I believe). We did the middle one - 5 star hotels, including the Peninsula in Beijing. The total signed up for the tour was 35, so they broke it in to 2 separate tours, each with out own US guide and a local guides. 3 nights on the River was just right.
Let me know if you have any specific questions.

A friend of mine took his elderly father on a PDT trip (the 4-star hotel one) two years ago and had nothing but good things to say. On the other hand, I've seen posts from people unhappy with GCT.

If you're willing to skip the cruise altogether (opinions are divided now the water level has risen) you could do China on your own, which might make more sense if your mother has mobility problems.