Oct 14, 2024
BELFAST IS AMAZING - Belfast is amazing. The sites there were both historical and beautiful. We went to the Titanic Experience first. This adventure was the highlight for me. I felt just like I was a passenger along with all the other folks. It was very sobering to imagine the events of April 12th. After going through this experience, we went for afternoon tea at the Merchant Hotel. Finger sandwiches, yummy dessert cakes and wonder tea were offered. We loved it.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Sep 29, 2024
Excellent Excursion - The Titanic Experience was great …. Wish we’d had more time
Steven the tour guide was extremely knowledgeable and very helpful
Review provided by Viator
Sep 26, 2024
Excellent tour - The whole tour was great. The guide provided meaningful facts and relevant stories. Thank you for the wonderful time.
Review provided by Viator
Sep 25, 2024
A Great Experience - This day long tour, with Finn McCool Tours was an excellent experience.
There does need to be better clarification as to where you meet the bus at the dock. The Google map on the Viator site showed the pick up point across the harbour. Luckily, we were directed to the correct spot at our dock by a local cab driver.
Though there is quite a bit of driving to get to the different sights, our guide kept us informed with what we were seeing while we were enroute.
The Giant's Causeway and Dunluce castle were breathtaking, as were the views along the Antrim coast.
We enjoyed our stop at the Dark Hedges, made famous by Game of Thrones.
Our final stop was at the Titanic Experience in Belfast at the site of the Harland and Wolff dry docks where the Titanic and her sister ship the Olympic were built. We enjoyed the museum but didn’t have enough time to explore around the exhibit.
Despite horrendous rush hour traffic in Belfast, they got us back to our ship in plenty of time. Thumbs up all around 👍
Review provided by Viator
Sep 14, 2024
A great trip and worth spending the day exploring. - A great trip and made all the more memorable by the commentator and driver. Both friendly and lots of fun.
Review provided by Viator
Oct 10, 2024
Must See! - Enjoyed the tour to Giant’s Causeway although it was drizzling at the time and other stops. Felt nostalgic visiting the Titanic Museum but I’m amazed at their collection of history surrounding the making of the ship, the extravagant voyage and the tragedy. Highly recommend!
Review provided by Viator
Sep 29, 2024
Touring the Northern Coast - Loved the scenic tour, beautiful coastal views and the countryside was spectacular.
Our tour guide Steven was fun and informative, our driver John was also very fun.
Review provided by Viator
Sep 8, 2024
The Giant's Causeway and... - The Giant's Causeway and Titanic Experience were both great - I'm glad we did them. It was a pretty rushed day though. I wish we had skipped the Dark Hedges (total waste of time) and maybe driven by a few less scenic things in order to save time for lunch. Protip: Sit on the left side of the bus, it has a better view.
Review provided by Viator
Oct 12, 2024
Not Recommended - My wife (72) and I (70 in a few months), both retirees, were on the Finn McCool Giant's Causeway/etc tour September 28.
First, the weather was unusually nice. The sites we visited were magnificent, especially the Causeway, which was to be one of the highlights of our cruise. Our tour guide was fine and did a good job of pointing out places of interest and historical significance.
That is the last good thing I will say about this tour.
We were assigned to a small bus (tag #G12 SLO). There are only 28 seats on that bus that are fit for humans. We were not in any of them.
Finn McCool Tours, out of what I can only imagine is abject greed, booked 31 passengers today. The tour guide and his materials took up two of the seats at the front of the bus, leaving only 26 seats, and a back bench that I believe must have been invented by Torquemada.
Five adult humans, including my wife, me, and another elderly couple, were forced onto this back bench which had NO recline, absolutely no leg room (my knees were jammed against the seat in front of me for over four hours) and our noses were literally six inches from the seats in front (I measured). The five of us sat the entire time shoulder-touching-shoulder and hip-to-hip, with no way at all to make ourselves comfortable. This is completely unacceptable.
We were literally in pain from the moment we sat down until the moment we got off the bus. I have back pain problems already, and spending almost four hours today cramped into a space hardly fit for luggage exacerbated them. My wife became claustrophobic, jammed in against the window with the inconsistent cooling. Much of the trip, the temperature was too high for comfort. Many others in the bus complained about it as well, and the driver did adjust it, but by then I was coated in sweat and plagued by muscle cramps in my back.
At the last stop, I stayed on the bus because I was just too exhausted and in too much pain to climb off and climb back in one more time. I had the opportunity while the other passengers disembarked to try one of the human-sized regular seats. It would have been entirely satisfactory, but I never had a chance to find out. If my wife and I had been able to access the regular seats, the excursion would have been as thrilling as we had anticipated.
My wife and I told the tour guide that the bench seat at the back was intolerable, as did the other elderly couple forced to sit there. He and the driver tried it out and agreed, but there was nothing to do about it. We were already stuck on this bus for the entire painful, excruciating trip, with no avenue for relief.
To say this ruined our experience would be an understatement. This was one of our most-anticipated excursions on this trip, and rather than being able to enjoy it, I spent the entire time in agony.
Under no circumstances whatsoever should this trip have allowed more than 26 passengers to register. We arrived at the bus 25 minutes before departure, and the real seats were already full, so we had no choice but to squeeze and fold ourselves into the steerage bench at the back, along with three other hapless victims.
This experience was a massive disappointment. Finn McCool and its obvious obsessive greed completely ruined what should have been an inspirational tour of a majestic natural wonder.
I will NEVER take another Finn McCool Tour again, under any imaginable circumstance, and I hope someday, in the fullness of time, when the tour operators are senior citizens, they will experience a day as painful and disappointing as ours was, only twice as long.
Review provided by Viator
Sep 10, 2024
Disappointed in Belfast - The Giants Causeway and Titanic Museum were outstanding. The tour guide was informative but offered too many off-color and inappropriately political “jokes”. But worst of all was the lack of accurate, easily accessible information about where to meet the tour. I was sent a text the day before with a gps map with the meeting location indicated. We had to take a cab to the location because it was much too far to walk. The location ended up being in an abandoned area of an industrial dock. The fact that we eventually found the bus was only due to frantic efforts on our part and those of our cab driver. I would never use Viator again.
Review provided by Viator