hnsmom

My daughter has an opportunity to travel with her school on an EF tour this upcoming Spring. I might accompany the group as well. She is new to the school (which has not begun yet) and itenerary details have not yet been given, but most likely the travel will be within Europe. I have been researching the tours themselves just in general. There seems to be a very mixed reaction to them. The main problems seem to be hotel choices (noncentral and sparse) and meals.
I lived overseas in my teen years as a military brat and we did a lot of traveling through Europe via our VW camper van and a tent (which leaked at times)! So I am not too concerned that she travel to first class hotels! As long as the accomodations are safe of course. In some ways I believe you appreciate the trip more when you are roughing it a bit. (Please don't clobber me here!)
I would love to hear experiences of anyone who has traveled with an EF trip including specifically:
1. Food - did you find it satisfactory, and could you possibly give just a couple of examples of meals? Not so interested in breakfast as a roll or granola bar (packed from home) will be quite sufficient for us. Very interested in supper. I believe lunch is not included most days.

2. Did you feel the hotels were clean and safe?

3. What was the highlight of your trip? (Sorry, I know this is very broad, but we are both excited about this opportunity for her as she has never been to Europe and are having trouble finding recent/current information in our searches. We would love to hear some experiences while we wait for school to begin when we will receive more information and be able to talk to others who have taken these tours in the past).

Thank you for any experiences you may wish to share.

jean253

See the post by Baldworth.

hnsmom

Thank you. I have been reading his trip report and really enjoying it.

Mimar

Haved you searched Fodors for posts about EF tours? I remember a series of posts awhile back about EF and other such companies. The posters weren't very happy with their experience.

hnsmom

Mimar, Yes, I have done that. I have heard some general complaints and general raves but would like something a little more specific. For example, I've heard "the meals are awful". But I've not heard why... is it the quantity, is it the food does not taste good or is it because it is fast food, or... see what I'm saying? I'm hoping to find a few more details. Most of the posts I have found (with a couple of exceptions) seem to be at least a couple of years old.
My daughter's school/students seem to be satisfied with their past trips. I am thinking a lot of it will just depend on our expectations. I do understand that school travel with a group of students will be different than touring on one's own and would just like a little more information on other's experiences.
I realize it's a rather broad topic, which is why I was trying to center on the food and the hotels - which were the two most common general complaints I've read about.
But I'd of course love to hear any experiences outside of those, also, if someone has one they'd like to share.

hnsmom

I wanted to add.... I know a couple of people who have taken EF trips in the past and had good things to say about them. However it has been a couple of years at least since they had traveled with them. I've not heard anything drastically terrible from anyone I personally know. However, I have heard some general complaints online. I just want to be prepared for any challenges so I can plan ahead for them if need be. When I was a teen and we traveled in Europe, I was accustomed to flights of stairs with no elevators, very small rooms, sometimes shared bathrooms (in very rural Yugoslavia, the shower was a fountain outside in the courtyard), some great meals, some not so great (rotisserie sheep heads in Paris - upside down on the spit, they looked like roasted chickens, imagine our surprise when we got them back to our hotel room and flipped them over and realized what they were!) We had french fries for dinner that night. lol
What I'm getting at, is I know everyone has different ideas of what is acceptable and when one person says the food is awful, another might think it is not great but acceptable. So specific reasons why they feel this way would be very helpful to me. For example, we really would not care to eat McDonald's while traveling in France! We'd prefer to try the local food. Is it common to eat at American style fast food chains or obviously tourist aimed restaurants?
It seems to me that if you are on your own at lunch, you can find the off the path type smaller restaurants then? I don't know how much free time is given or what transportation is available so how this would work out.

lucy_d

I have been on two EF tours with kids, although the last one was in '99, so what I can offer may be dated.

You are correct that the hotels are not luxurious, but it is a student tour. All seemed safe to me. You will probably find that the rooms are small or that the elevators are too small to accomodate more than two people and two pieces of luggage. The kids can go up the stairs; they don't know the difference, and they think it's fun!

No, from an adult standpoint, the food is not that great either, but the company is trying to please most teenagers who like chicken fingers and french fries. Dinners will most likely be at the hotel, a brass and fern type place, or a cafeteria style restaurant. You are correct, however, that the students have more choices for lunch, and they can experience the local cuisine that way.

The kids are certainly kept busy. I would recommend EF as a student tour for beginning European travelers. All the kids I traveled with had a great time, learned a lot, and their parents were satisfied with the tour and the price.

I, too, have read negative comments about EF online, and I tend to think that those who have a bad experience are more likely to get online and post about it. Also, not all adults understand that the hotels and meals are geared to satisfy the kids and keep the prices down for the parents.

Hope this helps.

hnsmom

lucy_d, thank you for your comments. That is kind of what I was expecting. I also thought perhaps those with bad experiences are more vocal. The school said last year's group went for around $1500 and that included 9 days and many major cities (Rome, Paris, Munich, London...). That seems quite reasonable to me. We will see what this year's trip will be. They sometimes go to Japan instead, though I don't believe it will be this year, so I will probably also post on the Asia board as I haven't yet heard of anyone traveling there through EF.
I am fine with the budget aspects of it and actually prefer that as it will enable more students to go. As I told a friend of mine, dd can go first class when she does it on HER dime and I imagine she will appreciate it all the more then!
I am also less concerned that my daughter see everything than I am that she see SOMETHING! She has gone on youth trips and church camp where 6 girls shared a room and a bathroom, so I really doubt she will realize she is roughing it somewhat.
Thank you for your comments.

Beatle

hnsmom- Type in "school travel" in search and read my post to the school travel and exchange topic.(It's near the end)

mlm59

I was part of an EF tour in June of this year to Europe. While there were some things that weren't so good, I was pleaed overall and was nearly everyone in our group.

The most important issue I think is your tour director and ours was awesome! Of course you don't know that in advance.

We flew Continental to Rome. Very nice plane with individual video screens although going over most of us slept at least part of the time.

Spent 2 nights in Rome. This was the worst hotel and food. Hotel was clean. 2 adults shared rooms. 3-4 students shared a room. This hotel was quite a ways outside the city. With the horrible traffic it probably took 45-60 minutes to get from the city to the hotel. Dinner was served at the hotel. It was edible, but portions were very small and some of the boys were hungry after dinner. There was no place to walk to for drinks or snacks and no machines at hotel. Luckily, we had taken snacks with us and had bought a couple of drinks in Rome before going to the hotel, but had to drink them hot since there was no ice (but there wasn't anywhere we stayed).

Rome was a great city. On the second day we had to get up very early to get to the Vatican to get in this huge line. But it was worth it. We had a local guide for the Vatican who also accompanied us to several other sites in the city. Her English wasn't the best. We then had a few hours to explore on our own. We went back to the hotel, had another unremarkable meal and then took a night tour of the city. We were all ready for bed when we returned.

On our way to Florence we first stopped at a cheese and wine store. What a waste, but lots of people bought stuff. I've heard the tour companies get a commission and I believe it. There were other tour buses coming and going while we were there.

We then stopped at Assisi. One of the surprises of our trip. I had read much about the major cities we were visiting but nothing about Assisi. It is such a neat place and the cathedral is breath-taking. Also had a really nice restroom for .60 euros. We had quickly found that restrooms could be hard to find in Rome.

We arrived in Florence in the late afternoon. Hotel we stayed at was in Signa. Not sure how far outside the city, but not as bad as Rome. Again hotel was clean, but rooms were very small. There were places nearby for snacks and drinks. Ate both nights at restaurants in Florence. Food was good. Boys in our group were always looking for food that others didn't eat.

Again, the first afternoon our tour director lead us through part of the city and then gave us some free time. The second day we had a local tour guide and then had the afternoon free.

We traveled from Florence to Lucerne, which was quite a distance. We stopped a couple of times at the Auto Grills for a break. Clean restrooms and decent hot and cold food as well as snacks. We stopped to see Pisa. It was interesting to see, but what a tourist trap. Not only is the tower neat to see, the church is beautiful, but you have to have a ticket to get inside and we didn't have time to do that.

Lucerne is a beautiful city. We stayed in a hotel in Erstfeld which was again several miles outside the city. The rooms were small, but very clean. This was the only place we stayed where there was no air conditioning and it was quite warm when we were there. Dinner at this place was the best. Food was excellent and they offered second helpings. The boys loved it.

Many of us took the optional trip up Mt Pilatus. It was really neat. We boarded the boat on Lake Lucerne, took it to the cog railroad, and then took the tram and cable car back down. The ride down was beautiful and the cows with their bells was neat.

Again we had a local guide for a tour of the city and he was excellent. The Jesuit church in Lucerne is, in my opinion, the most beautiful church I saw in Europe.

On Wednesday afternoon the bus took us to Zurich. We were only in Zurich a few hours and didn't have a chance to see any areas except those around the train station. Dinner that night was in a restaurant in the train station and it was marvelous. The train trip from Zurich to Paris wasn't too great. There were 6 of us in a compartment with all of our luggage. It was VERY crowded, but we survived. The worst part was only one working restroom for the entire car. Some of the teenage girls hogged the restroom the morning of our arrival in Paris, which made things very uncomforable for the rest of us.

Paris was wonderful and everything I envisioned. We stayed at a Comfort Inn on the outskirts of the city, but it was very near a metro station so it wasn't an inconvenience. I'm not sure the neighborhood was the best, but being with a group, we weren't worried. The hotel had machines where we could get snacks and drinks and there was a grocery store nearby where some of us stopped to pick up things.

We had a local tour guide our first day in Paris. She led us through Versailles. What a beautiful place. Well worth a visit. Our second day is Paris was a long day. Our tour director took us on a walking tour of the city all morning. We had free time in the afternoon and got back together later for dinner. Both evenings we had dinner at restaurants in the city and the food was reasonably good.

Some of continued on with an evening tour of the city and those that were too tired went back to hotel. The tour director gave them directions for the metro and they had no problems. Those of us who continued on the night tour went on a cruise down the Seine. It was okay and something anyone in Paris for the first time would probably want to do. We then went to the Eiffel Tower. We went to the top observation deck and it was a mad house. If I had to do over again I would only go to the second level. Once you finally got to the top you had to concentrate on getting in the line to go back down. When we finally got to the bottom we were greeted by a wall of street vendors trying to sell things to us. These were the most persistent people we encountered.

We had until 4:00 Saturday afternoon to do whatever we wanted. We figured out the metro and took off. My daughter enjoyed browsing from the vendors who have their boxes along the Seine. She found two beautiful drawings at reasonable prices. We enjoyed just walking through several areas of the city and gave ourselves enough time to figure out how to get back to the hotel.

We went to the train station to board the train to Madrid. Got a boxed meal for our dinner. Not much of a meal. Thank goodness for snacks.

The trip from Paris to Madrid was about 14 hours. The tracks were very rough. This train had 4 to a compartment - much better than 6. When we boarded there were 2 bench seats that faced each other for us to sit on. Around 10:00 the conductor came around and pushed up the seats and pulled down the bunks. This compartment had a sink and bottled water so we could wash up and brush our teeth without having to tie up the restrooms.

We liked Madrid. We had a guide through the city who led us through the Royal Palace. It is a beautiful place, but on a much smaller scale than Versailles. Several in our group went to the bull fight late on Sunday afternoon, but we chose not to go. Too barbaric for us. It gave us a chance to rest for a while and catch up on our journals. The next day was a free day and went spent hours walking the city, shopping and spending some time in our hotel room getting packed to go home. What a bummer it was to "return to reality". We had dinner both nights at restaurants in Madrid. The second night was one of the worst meals of our trip, second only to the meals in Rome.

We got up early the next morning (12:30 AM our time) for our trip to the airport. It seemed like the airport took forever. We walked a long way, then it took a long time for us to get through check in and then another long line at security.

The flight back to the US was uneventful. I couldn't sleep going home, but there was a video screen on the seat in front for watching movies and playing games.

The most eventful part of the trip was our arrival in Newark. We only have 1 1/2 hours between flights. If Continental had not held the plane we would have missed it. Of course there were 38 of us so the chances of the plane leaving without us I figured was slim. It took forever for all of us to get our luggage from the Madrid flight. Then the customs line was long and a couple of people in our line were pulled out for inspection. We then had to recheck our luggage, but Continental had someone to assist us. We then had to walk a long way to security and the lines were long. Our leaders hoped we could be put to the front of the line, but that didn't happen. I don't think Continental could help with the security lines. Again a couple of people had to go through extra screening. We finally got to the gate and then had to wait as air traffic was backed up.

At all of the places we stayed breakfast was contintal. Some places had more selections than others, but we survived.

I would go with EF again. Again we wee lucky to have a great tour director who took care of any problems that arose.

It helped that I had done a lot of research before we went and was able to avoid some of the problems others in our group experienced.

Hope this information has been helpful to you.

lucy_d

Not to be contrary, but ice is not a standard in most European countries. Paying to use the WC is also quite common, especially in heavily visited tourist areas. I'm not sure that either of these issues would relate to a tour company.

EF caters to students,so adults may not be as satisfied with the quality of the hotels and meals. Because the tours are for students, the company is able to keep the cost of the trips at a minimum for the students and the parents.

hnsmom

mlm, I can't tell you how incredibly helpful all of this is. I will definitely pack plenty of snacks and make sure we take drinks back to the hotels at night. I really don't think we'll have trouble with the accomodations. We had neither central heat nor air when I lived overseas and we adjusted.
I particularly enjoyed your descriptions of Italy as that was one of the countries I lived in. I'm hoping Italy is included as a destination. I imagine after 20 years there will be many changes and am anxious to return and for dd to experience some of what I have. Thank you very much for your detailed posting.

Beatle, I am off to find yours now. Thank you in advance.

hnsmom

Beatle, I found your post and am so glad to hear that you had so many successful trips! I will not have any control over the trip details but will be along for the ride. I think we will really enjoy the tour, however. It definitely helps to have a realistic view of what to expect in my opinion. We will not go looking for steak and lobster dinners or turn down service! Hell, my dd would survive on bread and water for 9 days if it meant visiting Europe. I would hope most teenagers who had not had this opportunity would feel the same way.