Has anyone used Smart Cruise Tours

We will be cruisng on the Legend and will like to use Smart Cruise Tours from Civitavecchia to Rome and from Livorno to Florence/Pisa.Has anyone heard or used them

A little reading on the board finds:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1684036&highlight=smart+cruise+tours

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1789609&highlight=smart+cruise+tours

and many others.

We will be cruisng on the Legend and will like to use Smart Cruise Tours from Civitavecchia to Rome and from Livorno to Florence/Pisa.Has anyone heard or used them

Hi there

I would highly recommend "Smartcruisetours" we used them in Rome proffesional courteous and easy to organise.

Julia in the office was very helpful suggesting ideas and itinerary changes so we made the most of our Rome stop.

The driver Guliano was fantastic driving us around Rome showing us sights we had not included on our itinerary as only a local could

I see they have put there prices up by 30 euros but are still good value in my books

Damon and Family

Worst experience of our cruise. Forgot about our excursion - completely - and left two of our people in Rome. Completely ruined a 12-hour day in Rome for 19 people - many of whom had never seen Rome before. :(

There is a large roll call from May 4th Carnival Legend that could give you an earful about how terrible things worked-out for them in 3 different ports using Smart Cruise Tours. All three tours were arranged by three different individuals and had three different groups of people on the tours.

i will give a full report after our three tours with them in the next five days. I am expecting nothing but a great time!!

We went with Smartcruise Tours for our private tour of Rome early May. Our driver was Giovanni as well, he was great! We had a marvelous time with him. He was great in organizing the itinerary we wanted to take. Try to book him if you can.

We also went with them with their two port combo tour of Naples and Livorno. Both went off without any problems. Good value for your money.

Worst experience of our cruise. Forgot about our excursion - completely - and left two of our people in Rome. Completely ruined a 12-hour day in Rome for 19 people - many of whom had never seen Rome before. :(

 

There is a large roll call from May 4th Carnival Legend that could give you an earful about how terrible things worked-out for them in 3 different ports using Smart Cruise Tours. All three tours were arranged by three different individuals and had three different groups of people on the tours.

Yours is only one of the many negative reviews coming out lastly here and on trip advisor, thanks for sharing your experience with us.

You should be careful when reading reviews and comments, check for feedbacks on a reviewer and other reviews online, not everything you read online is correct or true, only my 2cent :)

Yours is only one of the many negative reviews coming out lastly here and on trip advisor, thanks for sharing your experience with us.

You should be careful when reading reviews and comments, check for feedbacks on a reviewer and other reviews online, not everything you read online is correct or true, only my 2cent :)

Yes, you are correct. Unfortunately, we screwed-up big time by using them. They had some bad reviews last year on Cruise Critic and we chose to ignore them and try them anyway because of the price... but, as usual, you get what you pay for. :(

We used Smartcruisetours.com a few weeks ago for five excursions and they were great except for one hic-cup and that was the fact that the Driver for Florence/Pisa spoke almost no English but Julia from Smartcruisetours immediately apologized for the error and would never use that driver again once she received my wife's email the same tour of the tour, in fact we were still on tour when she sent the email. We used them in Rome, Naples, Venice, Florence/Pisa and one other stop which escapes me at the moment . Julia is great to work with and will adapt the tour to your needs and desires. We found their prices to be better than any other tour group we checked out. I believe you will also find great reviews for them on Trip Advisor. Good Luck. In two tours we were a group of six and the others we were only a group of four. Hope this helps.

Larry

We used Smartcruisetours.com a few weeks ago for five excursions and they were great except for one hic-cup and that was the fact that the Driver for Florence/Pisa spoke almost no English but Julia from Smartcruisetours immediately apologized for the error and would never use that driver again once she received my wife's email the same tour of the tour, in fact we were still on tour when she sent the email.

This is why it's important to read the detail when you contract for a service. If you contracted for transportation services only, you got what you asked for. If you contracted for transportation and commentary (not a guide, which is a different license, but simply commentary) in English, I would think that a refund would be in order as you didn't receive what you paid for.

Interesting. Well, there are 17 people in my group due a refund and 6 others in another group (same cruise, different port) to which Julia owes refunds. Definitely check your wording.... as we most certainly did and still, they did not deliver appropriately...by any stretch of the imagination!!

Used them several times and had no problems whatsoever.

Highly recommended.

We just returned from a 12 day cruise and used Smart Cruise Tours for Florence, Rome and Amalfi. There were 6 of us and we were extremely pleased with them! We got exactly what we asked for (and sometimes more than we expected) and it was a great value for the money. They were wonderful with communication before the trip to make sure everything was in order. We highly recommend them!

Yes, you are correct. Unfortunately, we screwed-up big time by using them. They had some bad reviews last year on Cruise Critic and we chose to ignore them and try them anyway because of the price... but, as usual, you get what you pay for. :(

Yep, you always get what you pay for :(

Yep, you always get what you pay for :(

We hired SmartCruiseTours to take us around Marseille, and were very pleased with our excursion. Our driver was friendly and showed us everything on the itinerary. She even went out of her way to give us extra time to explore the city on foot and came back to pick us up and take us to our ship. I think it was a great value for the low price.

We are a group of 8 adults. We used Smart Cruise Tours for ship excursions in Palermo (Palermo/Monreale/Mondello) and Marseille (Marseille/Aix en Provence/Cassis). What a wonderful, professional company! I was very leery about booking anything but a cruise ship excursion for fear that we would have problems and wouldn't get back to the ship in time. No worries with Smart Cruise Tours! We had drivers/guides that lived in the areas we toured, so they knew all the short cuts and hidden sites that regular tours have to bypass. We were also lucky because we had our own van (spacious, clean and efficient) so we were able to get closer to the sites than the tour bus would be. Our drivers were so personable, too, and we covered so much in so short a time.

Special thanks to Giovanni, our Palermo guide, especially for singing to us in Italian! He was so helpful when we came upon one of those famous instant strikes that Italy has, because he knew how to back-track to get us out of the area. All the tour busses were stuck there. It was obvious that he loved his country and loved showing it to us. Martial, our driver in Marseille was equally knowledgeable, and he lived in Aix en Provence!

If you have any doubts about using this company, please don't. These tours were highlights of our cruise and I will definitely use this company again when we go to Europe in the future!

All I know is I cancelled my train tickets to Rome with them, and was assured by Julia via email that the refund would be processed within two weeks. After two weeks I emailed again and was told she had contacted the admin dept who apologized for the delay and would process the refund that day. This was two weeks ago and still nothing.

Not impressed.

I'm sorry you had such a different experience with them. I can only write about the experiences we had, and before, during and after our tours I had nothing but excellent ones. Each time I wrote to Julia before our trip I received prompt responses. When I had a question about paying the balance of one of our tours by credit card instead of in euros, she handled that as well without any problem. So I have to stand by my review and commend them for our tours because we really did enjoy their services immensely...

I'm sorry you had such a different experience with them. I can only write about the experiences we had, and before, during and after our tours I had nothing but excellent ones. Each time I wrote to Julia before our trip I received prompt responses. When I had a question about paying the balance of one of our tours by credit card instead of in euros, she handled that as well without any problem. So I have to stand by my review and commend them for our tours because we really did enjoy their services immensely...

I'm glad to hear it. Julia did reply promptly to my email, saying she would look into it immediately, so hopefully it will get resolved soon.

I just got an email from Julia yesterday saying she had been away, so maybe you'll get your answer now that she's back...

I just got an email from Julia yesterday saying she had been away, so maybe you'll get your answer now that she's back...

I hope so. She is certainly prompt at answering emails, but whoever is in charge of issuing refunds is not so prompt. I'm glad you had a good tour with them.

Julia came through with the refund this morning. There was apparently some miscommunication on their end but she took full responsibility for that and made every effort to have the refund processed immediately, which it was.

I definitely appreciate her prompt replies and her efforts on our behalf. :)

We used them to get from Civitaveccia to Rome. Price was right and it was exactly what we expected. We were very pleased with their service and will use them again.

Highly recommended by us too.

We used them as an excursion transfer to and from Rome from Civitavecchia. Booked online for around €25 each. The coach picked us up from outside the port entrance and dropped off at the entrance to Vatican City. So easy. Same for the return.

There was also the option to stay on the coach for a full day tour of Rome but we like walking so only needed the transfers.

We would definitely use them again.

HI,

I used them in May for my Mediterranean cruise with NCL. I used them for Florence/Rome and Naples.

For all three cities they were waiting for my group right outside the gangway with my name on a sign. I had gone over the itinerary with Julia ( so nice and very helpful) and since Mondays, the museums were closed, we went to Pisa first, took some pictures, some of our group climbed it and we were on our way in about an hour. We then drove to Florence and had some time to walk around after getting a map from the driver and an idea of what to see, do some shopping and sit at a café in a piazza, drinking espresso. After that we drove to an amazing winery in Tuscany for a tour and a wine tasting. We made it back to the ship with plenty of time to spare.

For Rome our driver drove us to all the places we had wanted to see and gave us enough time to either walk around if needed or just to take some pictures. We went into the coliseum using skip the line tickets purchased through the Smartcruise website link. Just make sure you print out the tickets themselves and not just the reservation. we went last to the Vatican. Some of us just walked around ST Marks and some climbed to the top of the dome. None of us went to the Vatican Museum. That is possible to do, but it would have taken away from some other things we preferred doing.

Again, we made it back to the ship in plenty of time.

In Naples, our driver picked us up, and we drove to Pompeii. While there we all decided to have a private tourguide which was a really great decision. Otherwise we wouldn't have known what the heck we were looking at. After oPmpeii, he drove us to Sorrento and dropped us off for about an hour. After Sorrento we drove along the coast and went through some of the towns. Positano was just gorgeous. On the way to Amalfi, we stopped at this amazing restaurant with a view to die for. Afterwards, we got to taste some Lemoncello. We stopped at Amalfi for about an hour then on the way back to the shop, we drove through Ravello. I was nervous we wouldn't get back to the ship after doing so much but there was no problem at all. He knew how long it would take and how to get there in plenty of time. I would definitely recommend Smartcruise tours to anyone wanting a reasonable price and an amazing tour. If anyone has any specific questions about my experience, please feel free to ask.