We are looking at the "China Scenic" 14 day tour with Ritz Tours for next spring. We would love to hear from readers who have traveled to China or Asia with Ritz in the last year or two. Was your guide helpful? Were the hotel rooms clean and comfortable, centrally located? Did you have enough time at attractions? Was the forced shopping a nuisance? Was the food appetizing? Do they serve mostly Chinese or western food? We hope many will reply as we don't see many recent posts about Ritz Tours on this board. Thanks.

While I didn't do the Ritz tour within the last 2 years, we took a Ritz tour of China in 2001, perhaps I can be helpful.

We certainly got our money's worth. The hotels were all nice and mostly 5 star, although the hotel in Shanghi was pretty far away from anything of interest. Although it was a beautiful hotel, it was a last minute change and very inconvenient.

The food was all Chinese and some of it was very good, most was mediocre and we were sick of it within about 3 or 4 days, to the point that we actually hunted down a McDonalds, something we NEVER do anywhere!

I don't remember too much forced shopping, in fact, we hardly did any shopping at all. I remember thinking we didn't have enough time to shop because all of our days were jam packed with sightseeing and we actually all begged to be taken shopping! We got our guide to drop us off at a wonderful night market in X'ian. Which brings me to another complaint--there was too much activity. We were exhausted. We would start out at 8:30am and some nights we didn't get back to the hotel until after 11:00pm, with no chance to rest in between. The only time we had to relax was on the 5 day Yangtze River cruise, and even then, a few of the days were packed but at least we could relax at night.

Our guide, Lulu, was wonderful and I have no complaints there. She was very helpful and informative and was with us for the entire two weeks.

I did enjoy the tour and I'm glad we went. I don't like tours but this one was made especially enjoyable because there were only 9 of us on the tour and we all got along very well and, since there were so few of us, we could agree on changes to the itinerary. I wouldn't expect such a small group however, we went two weeks to the day after 9/11 and I'm sure many people cancelled their travel plans.

I also went on my Ritz China tour several years ago, but I thought I would respond. My experience and feelings are similar to laurieco. Our days were jam packed with sightseeing with NO time for shopping. Even the "forced shopping" was frustrating because we weren't really given enough time to look around and then make purchases. I held the entire bus up at the jade factory while trying to complete my sale. I remember our days beginning earlier than laurieco's and we wouldn't check into our hotel until past 8p. Sometimes our only shopping opportunities were a few minutes at the hotel gift shops before they closed. The hotels were all really nice. We had Chinese food every meal and some were good, some were so-so. Our guide was really nice and I have no complaints about what we saw. It just would have been nice to have had a bit of leisure time to shop and/or explore on our own. btw, we were supposed to have a free morning in Shanghai on our last day, but they changed our schedule at the last moment and we ended up on an early morning flight with a layover in Korea at the new (at the time) Inchon Airport. Many people ended up buying their gifts to bring hom at that airport.

Just had to reply to this. We also went with Ritz for a 18 day tour. We thought our food was really good. All Chinese except western breakfasts. Great hot pot, good Peking duck, wonderful dumplings in Xian. We only felt we had one bad meal in all. Our tour had 23 I think. Way too many people. We have only done two tours ever. This one and one to Egypt. I preface this with saying I am a total non-shopper. Hate it. That term actually came from our guide with Ritz. (He was fabulous by the way). Best guide we have ever had. We will never ever do a tour again - reason TOO much shopping. Others on the tour kept having to buy more suitcases to get all of their junk home. Days are definately long. Hotels were great. All of the local guides were very good except one in Shanghai. We went in 2002 - so probably not as current as you are looking for. Funny how one person's way too much shopping is another's not nearly enough shopping.

We went last year and we did the China Panorama tour. The hotels were GREAT! VERY nice! I know that Ritz's other tours have different hotels, but I see that you're at some of the same ones we stayed at....New Otani and Sheraton.

The food is pretty much all Chinese. In the mornings, you get a buffet that has some Chinese stuff and some American stuff.

Not sure how your tour is set up, but we did have some free time on our own to go shopping. There ARE a number of "forced" shopping stops that they make and I think this is the same with pretty much any tour company you go with.

They use so many guides that it's hard to say whether or not you'll get a good one as compared to ours. Our guides were pretty good in each city. We felt we had more than enough time at each attraction.

I definitely wouldn't mind using Ritz again for another trip.