Nov 2, 2023
Fascinating - Had great fun with my guide Mario.
Found the Tour to the local cemetery fascinating (where we saw the local traditions) and boat tour nice as well.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Nov 2, 2023
Safe and informative - The canal ride was very chill and chilly. It was a good opportunity to have fun and there were opportunities to buy food and drinks as well at both places. The tour said it included La Llorona as part of the tour but it was not in fact included.Faleadvetisement but looks like they may have updated it since then (by taking it off). I love seeing the panteones with the group and having the guides inform us and keep us safe. I’d say overall it’s a great tour but not worth the current price in my opinion. Too much for what it was.
Review provided by Viator
Nov 13, 2023
Enjoyable experience with some improvement needed. - Our tour guides were amazing, entertaining and incredibly knowledgeable about Mexico City, Mexican history and culture, the Day of the Dead festivities and old Mexican legends. The graveyard was a beautiful experience and it was amazing to be welcomed by families to come and enjoy the celebrations with them. The boat ride was ok, the mariachi and tequila were enjoyable but the boat ride was a bit bland apart from that. I hope Amigo Tours chooses a different travel company in the future as our driver tried to find a shortcut leading to the bus getting stuck in a street market and unable to back up. Because of this, we had to get out and get a 40-minute uber back to our hotel.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Nov 11, 2023
Day of the Dead Tour - I’d give it a miss - First the positives - the tour started on time, in fact we arrived at the meeting point half an hour early and the guides and buses were already there. They split the group into English speakers bus and Spanish speakers bus. All the guides were dressed up and we had a very enthusiastic tour guide - Alexa who is probably an aspiring actress or musicals star! The less good - the trip to the cemetery was very interesting but I did feel a bit uncomfortable seeing people sat at the graves of loved ones. And the negative - the boat ride on the canals. I had read how all the boats gather in a lake, get into a semi-circle formation to watch a big light & sound show with a live performance and la llorona show. But we didn’t see this on our trip. All we did was go through the canal in the dark turn round and come back. Admittedly, we did have a marachi band play three songs, the tour guide told us the story of llorona and we did get tequila. Knowing what i know now i would have much preferred to go to the canals in the daytime. This was the most disappointing part of my holiday in Mexico.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Nov 10, 2023
Price-performance ratio insufficient - It was just a trip to the cemetery, which lasted an hour. Then we went on the boat trip, it wasn't lit up and you couldn't see much because it was already night. We spent most of the tour in the bus in traffic. The return trip also ended at a different point than agreed. Overall, the price-performance ratio is poor. You expect more than that from a tour that is advertised as lasting several hours.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Nov 10, 2023
Chaotic, not interesting and long - This tour was chaotic, not as interesting as expected and with a lot of time spent waiting or driving.
We arrived at the meeting point and had to wait 45 minutes to board the bus as our group had to wait for it to arrive. Then we spent around 2 hours driving because of the cities’ traffic. During the ride, one of the guides was explaining stuff but it got random very quickly and was annoying. At the beginning, the guide told us to bring warm clothes because it gets cold on the boat ride but what’s the point of saying that when everyone is there and not like a day earlier?
At the cemetery, we were walking around in the group and individually but it felt uncomfortable watching the locals during their family festivities as if being animals in a zoo… after around an hour and a lot of waiting for group members we continued to Xochimilco.
At Xochimilco, we felt like we were the only people there as it was already past 11pm. The guides brought us to buy drinks, to a weird place to take (group) photos and then we boarded the small boat. There, we got our pre-ordered food and drove around the canals but there was no kind of party spirit and the guides could not really animate the group, didn’t set up any music, were using social media etc. so that for the most of the time we were all sitting there staring at the dark canals. There was a group of Mariachis that joined us for the last 15 minutes.
We arrived back in the centro historico at around 1:30am.
Review provided by Viator
Nov 9, 2023
Avoid this tour - We read the bad reviews and decided to still go figuring maybe 2022 was the first year they ran this tour and had to work out some bugs. Nope..still the same bad issues.
First off, except for being run on the day of the dead, there is no reason to call this a day of the dead tour. We visited a cemetery, but I could have done that without spending 90 mins in traffic.
Like previous reviews, we were told be there at 545 and didn't leave until 715. We were loaded onto a double decker bus with an open roof. I asked the guide if we.coukd close the roof. He said, we needed to take a bite to see if there was 100% agreement! It was 50 degrees out!!! Fortunately his assistant didn't care about a vote and closed the roof.
We went to the cemetery but because of traffic only had 30 mins to see the alters AND grab something to eat from the food vendors.
We then went on the boat rides. I think there was an issue with the mariachi band because at one point we basically just sat int he water for about 15 mins before finally continuing on.
To end the night, we got diverted going home.and ended up driving down a street that ended up at a street fair. No where then us could go. We were all stuck. So we all had to get off the bus and call Uber to get us home.
Do yourself a favor. Don't book this tour. Just not worth it.
Review provided by Viator
Nov 2, 2023
The worst experience I’ve ever been charged for - Just don’t book this tour, it’s a terrible itinerary for a start and that’s before we get to all the other problems. I’d booked this tour as I stupidly thought it wouldn’t be as bad as the previous reviews. It’s worse. We were very late leaving even though there were a lot of staff at the pick up location. They’d split people into groups, we were the English speaking group. There was no bus available for us at this point, we were stood waiting an hour for it to arrive. No information about this, what so ever. They seemed more interested in constantly counting the number of people in the queue, I know we were there a while but we’d not started multiplying. Eventually a double decker bus arrived and we were counted onto it. The bus was an open top bus by day so the roof was still open, eventually they agreed to close the roof (it’s dark but this point and the temperature has dropped). The roof, however, had other ideas and kept springing open. It was a long 2 hour journey through traffic to the cemetery meaning we only had 40 minutes in the cemetery, annoying, because I’d argue that’s why most of us were there. You were given the opportunity to buy food from the stalls outside the cemetery but we didn’t as we wanted to make the most of our time there and so opted for food on the boat ride. Another mistake. I appreciate we were taken to this cemetery due to its size and the amount of people on the tour (about 5 bus loads) but it wasn’t very intimate. Some graves we tombs and quite large. The smaller ones were behind these and it was difficult to know where the small paths were in the dark. The last thing you want to do is trample along someone’s grave because you can’t quite make out the path. The guide spent a bit of time telling us things I’d argue we already knew about day of the dead, why else would you have booked the tour? And I felt he could have said it on the bus instead of giving us a tour of the city, personally I don’t care how big the university is or about the life and times of Frida Kahlo. We then left for Xochimilco which wasn’t far from the cemetery. This is the most pointless thing to do in the dark. We were out into brightly colour boats and sailed down one of the canals. You couldn’t see the scenery due to it being dark. You passed other boats and the odd building and polytunnel on the shore. It was like sailing round a garden centre. There were people in smaller boats constantly yelling at you to buy beer, even if you had one, or a headband. We came to the boat selling the food and had pre ordered the quesadillas. They were greasy and tasted of nothing, don’t waste your money. We had five minutes maximum of a mariachi band on our boat as we passed them, this was quite good. After an hour of sailing round in the dark and cold with nothing much to see we were back on dry land and in the bus, optimistic that the traffic would be better so it’d be a smoother journey back. How wrong was I?! The bus took a route down a street that was blocked by food stalls and couldn’t reverse back due to the traffic that has followed. The male guide just disappeared at this point, a few of us had stayed on the bus but weren’t told anything and couldn’t see the guide. I got off and found Pamela the female guide telling people they were going to fix the situation. Most people got off and got Ubers as there wasn’t a solution to the situation forthcoming. We tried for an Uber as we were freezing cold, tired and had headaches but the wait was too long. We ended up going back to the bus. We were then dropped off ten minutes walk away from our pick up point. Why on earth would you have a completely different drop off location?! It took us 25 minutes to walk to our hotel at 2am. We were absolutely freezing and exhausted by the time we got in. Today I’ve woken up with a cold and a headache, ruining day of the dead for me. This trip has cost me thousands of pounds to be here for day of the dead! All in all Pamela, the female guide tried her best throughout the night to make the night good for people and she stayed present unlike the male guide who kept disappearing. At the end drop off point he practically ran away when he got off the bus. No apology, no instructions on who to complain to, no offer of help or consideration. I appreciate things go wrong but it’s how you deal with them when they do and our guide didn’t have a clue and didn’t want to even try.
Review provided by Viator
Nov 2, 2023
Would Not Recommend - Traffic was bad on the way to the cemetery — which I expected, so no points off for that but we didn’t get to our first stop until nearly 9:00 pm. The cemetery was moderately interesting. We got to Xochimilco very late. A lot of the interesting things there had ended. But it was ok. The worst part was when our bus driver attempted to take a shortcut through a quiet side street on the way home. The double decker bus I was on was far too long and tall for the street. We took out tree branches, and electrical wires were scraping the roof. We eventually came to a T intersection with a street that was filled with tents set up for a fiesta. There was no way for the bus to navigate the turn without taking out the whole party set up. So everyone on the bus had to get taxis back into the central part of the city on their own dime.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Nov 2, 2023
Mexico City Day of the Dead Amigo Tours November 1, 2023 - Be careful, this was not a good experience for our tour group Amigo Tours, Day of the Dead with Alberto/Pamela. These guides are very nice, but there are some serious major flaws in the planning of this tour.
I suspect the experience varies greatly, depending on which bus and Guide to get assigned to. You are taking a gamble with this tour.
They ask you to be there at 5:45 PM, but they did not allow us to get on a bus until about 6:40 PM. I asked why there was a delay, and was informed that the company was actually on time, with boarding, anticipated anywhere between 6 and 7 PM. Be aware that there are many homeless people (one was screaming at one of the other attendees, and had to be escorted away) and taxi drivers barking at you, while you stand in line for this event behind the Palacio Belles Artes.
We stood in line behind a very long group of people. The bus we ended up getting on, was not actually commissioned by this tour group, but rather a “ hop on hop off bus” that was flagged down on the street. Please pack several layers. It is very cold on this kind of bus.
Our tour guides were very disorganized. It was very hard to understand our guide. the driver (again, was actually with the hop on hop off tour team), supposedly got lost on the way to the cemetery. There were many “ I don’t knows” and other disconcerting comments made by Alberto.
Seeing the cemetery was short-lived, but very beautiful and an interesting experience. The night boat ride was also very interesting. I did feel bad for a lady sitting next to us who had the edge of a boat poke into our boat against her seat, and it sounded like she may have experienced a back injury.
This eight + hour (!!) experience represented a series of unfortunate events, which culminated in us needing to find our own transportation home outside of the city after the bus became stuck on a small street. This happened in somewhat unsafe neighborhood at 1:30 am and as someone not from Mexico City, this was pretty scary.
Review provided by Tripadvisor