Stunning island trip - Great day trip to get an experience of santorini. Tour guide was very knowledgable and really added to the day.

Great Day Trip - It was a great way to see Santorini for a day. Now I know I don’t need to spend any more time there. Too many people. I personally liked Crete better. To each there own. The tour guide was great though.

Rush rush rush! - We went on an organised trip to Santorini from Rethymno via transfer from Chania. We got picked up at 6am from Talos Square in Chania old town. Transferred by car, then bus to Rethymno . Got our tickets for sea jet from the port, and boarded. The catamaran left promptly, and it took us around 2.5hrs to reach Santorini. There we were greeted by a guide who led us to our coach to transport us to Oia. Once at Oia, we were told we had 1.5 hrs to explore. It was so so busy. So hot. Just not enjoyable. I’ve stayed on Santorini before at Pyrgos, but my hubby had never been. We got back on the bus, then spent half an hour travelling to Fira. We stopped for lunch, and had a not so nice meal at El Greco…on our guides recommendation. I’d give it a miss next time! Then we had about 40 minutes to look around Fira. It was just rush rush rush. I did not enjoy it. Back on board the sea jet at 4.45. Left the port at 5. It took 3.5 hrs for our return journey. A long long day, for 3.5hrs on Santorini. €180 each inc the transfers. Would I do it again that way? A hard no!

Rushed but got the experience of Santorini - Should have listened to the other reviews. We wanted to see Santorini and with our limited time this seemed like the best choice. We hoped going in May was still early in season, but it’s still crowded. It is not a small tour and there was no option to go to the black beach as advertised. Very misleading. The tour guide did her best trying to wrangle 50 people. We did see highlights but if you want to experience Santorini you need at least 2 days.

Extremely busy and rude people - All the pictures you see show those beautiful white houses with blue domes. If you take the ferry from Rethymno to Santorini you will arrive at the port where you can only go to Fyra by shuttle bus or taxi. Taxi takes 15 minutes and will easily cost you around €35. The village mainly consists of jewelry stores (some are very pushy) and tourist souvenirs. The streets are narrow, so it quickly becomes very busy. The many stairs are not convenient for people who cannot walk smoothly. Very honest, I have never encountered such rude people. From the police officers upon arrival at the port, restaurant employees and shopkeepers. Also keep in mind that it is very expensive. Sometimes 2 to 3 times as expensive as on Crete. This is also the case with restaurants, especially if you want a sea view. Tzaziki that costs €14?! Just to give an example. Maybe we should have done a better job of preparing, but based on this I wouldn't go back anytime soon. Especially because the boat (Seajets) was very expensive and both crossings took over an hour longer than planned, which limited our time in Santorini. Last boat is already at 5 p.m.

You may be better off going it alone and renting a taxi for the day. - This is probably directed more at the tour company than the staff on the tour at the time, but I find it a poor choice to offer two city visits, given how tight traffic is…particularly during a heat wave. The tour guide was very hurried because she had to be. Everything was rushed to the point of not being able to keep up. Obviously, the time crunch is because it is a day trip where the ferry schedule rules overall….but just a trip to one of the cities would have been a better pace.

Santorini- Save your money! - The first thing to say is, I wouldn't do this again. Or visit Santorini in high season again. I booked the day trip to Santorini from Rethymno in Crete with visitcrete.com. The first issue was the seating on the ferry. The seats are in two's and you are allocated seat numbers on your tickets. We are a family of four, two adults and two kids, and yet we are seated 1,2,1. The ferry sailing time is approx 2hrs 40 mins. There is a decent cafe on board but I would recommend bringing your own entertainment of some kind. Once at Santorini, you all board coaches, the number of the coach you board, again, pre allocated on your ticket. There were at least 25 coaches waiting. They all set off as they fill up, all heading for the same place, Oia. Once at Oia, they all park up just below the village. Everyone in those 25+ coaches disembarks and follows a pathway up to the village like a trail of ants. The village is packed! Nearly every street is shoulder to shoulder, not helped by the contents of the three cruise ships in the bay. We only had about 1 hour and 30 minutes in Oia and were always aware that we had to be back at the coach for the designated time. We found ourselves trying to find the best places to take photographs amongst everyone else. There was no time to look around the little streets or enjoy the location. We found a place for a quick drink overlooking the caldera. One black coffee, one iced tea, two soft drinks and two ice creams, 50 GBP. Everything seemed to be twice the price of similar items on Crete. Of course, there was one family late back, delaying our departure by 15 mins and hence reducing our time in the next village, Fira. Again, in Fira, the coaches park just outside the village and everyone follows the person in front to the town. This village is a little larger so not quite so crowded. Only 1 hour and 45 minutes here before getting back on the coach for the ride back to the ferry port. The whole visit feels very rushed and not enjoyable. A total of 5 hours 20 mins on the ferry and 3 hours and 15 minutes on Santorini ( not including transfer time and waiting for latecomers to return ), at a cost of over 600GBP for the four of us. OK, so I can say I've been to Santorini, but it wasn't how I imagined it would be. I won't be returning.

Not a good price-performance ratio - Transfer and pick-up of boat tickets was very uncoordinated. Tour guide was not really useful. Very crowded on site and little time to explore the places. Overall not worth the money

Rearranged at short notice so we couldn’t go - I was terribly disappointed this week. I had booked this tour and fully paid months in advance, with the tour scheduled for Thursday 8th June. I was contacted on the afternoon of Monday 5th June to inform me that the tour would take place on Saturday 10th June - but we are leaving Crete in the evening of Friday 9th June. I have cancelled and received a full refund, but I am so very sad as this was a once in a lifetime holiday that we will not be able to repeat. I understand that the ferry now only runs on Tuesday and Saturday but I wish the provider had notified me further in advance so that I could rearrange my bookings. Now I will never get to visit Santorini.

Awful experience - Santorini Day Tour from Rethymno sold by Platanos Tours - I list below the many problems and disappointing experiences that my family and I faced during this tour - Day trip to Santorini by boat from Rethymno - sold to us by Platanos Tours: There was a massive delay in the ferry journey with Seajets (company running the ferry) from Rethymno to Santorini. It took 4hours and 15 minutes to do this journey. That's almost double the time when compared with the 2hours and 30 minutes advertised in the tour agent website. This was very distressing to our young children that are only 5 and 7 years old and were awake since 5:30 in the morning on that day. During the ferry trip to Santorini, I went to speak with the Seajets crew to try to obtain some information regarding the reason for the delay, expected time of arrival and my concerns regarding my young children. I had my five year old daughter with me at the time. While one member of staff was polite and informative explaining that the delay was due to a mechanical problem with the ferry, another member of the crew that was next to us, started singing/ humming, clearly ridiculing me and my concerns. This was completely unacceptable, unprofessional behaviour from a member of the crew. I pointed that out to him, saying that his behaviour was even made worse by the fact that there were young children involved. His colleague, that was trying to explain me the reason for the delay, was equally shocked by the way he had behaved. Despite his appalling behaviour and me expressing my shock at it, he didn't offer any apology or showed any regret for his attitude. Later in the same journey another member of the Seajets team responsible for the tour, came to speak with me. She had been made aware of the incident that occurred earlier and came to offer her apologies. She said it was absolutely my right to make a formal complaint if I wished so. Throughout the entire bus ride from the port of Santorini to Oia and from Oia to Fira, our guide insisted that we should not try to eat in Oia and should instead have lunch in a restaurant she highly recommended in Fira much later on in the day. She insisted on this quite strongly, despite the massive delay in the ferry arrival at Santorini. She didn't give any recommendations or tips at all to try to eat something in Oia at a normal time for lunch. This meant having lunch at 3pm in a restaurant in Fira where she basically took us to and where she knew all the staff and also had lunch. There was no concern at all for the fact that we had young children with us that obviously should not have lunch so late. On the bus from Oia to Fira. The guide spent a large part of the journey saying how amazing the restaurant in Fira she knew was, a proper family run, traditional place, and that we should definitely have lunch there. She even recommended certain dishes in the menu. Unfortunately her priority was clearly to convince us to have lunch in this place. She didn't spend any time giving us any useful tips on where to go, what to see and visit during our free time in Fira. That should have been her priority has a guide. My partner and I had to find our way around in the town with our two small children trying not to get lost. The restaurant "highly recommended" by the guide in Fira was actually a big disappointment. Overpriced food in a busy and not very nice street with pushy staff trying to sell more than what we wanted. We were even brought two burgers with raw meat that we had to send back to be cooked properly. I would classify this place as a typical "tourist trap" where you may end up if you don't know any better. A good, honest guide should never try to convince so forcefully her clients to go to a place like this. Because of the overall delay caused by the mechanical problem in the Seajets ferry in the morning we were offered a basic complimentary dinner meal on our way back to Rethymno in the same ferry. It turns out my chicken meat in this meal was also raw and not fit for human consumption - See photo. Despite the mechanical problem in the ferry apparently being fixed, the journey back still took 3hours and 15 minutes, significantly more than the time you advertise in your website. This meant that I and my family, including our small children were back at our hotel at 10:30pm exhausted and very hungry, having missed dinner time at the restaurant of our hotel. Platanos Tours advertises this tour as including a trip in a luxury catamaran. The ferry we went in should be best described as a standard modern passenger ferry with comfortable seats, nothing more than that. On both journeys we had to board and exit the ferry by foot via the car and cargo deck. Not surprisingly this area of the ferry had lack of ventilation, fumes and a strong smell of diesel. On both journeys all the passengers were crowded in this area waiting to exit the boat for about 15 minutes each time. This is certainly not what you expect in a "luxury catamaran experience" - See photos. We only got a guide in the short bus trips in Santorini giving some basic, very general information and above all trying to convince us to go and have lunch in a "tourist trap". The trip felt very impersonal, with little guidance, with lots of people coming from different hotels in different buses to join the same ferry to them be divided again in many buses in Santorini. We didn't see anybody from Platanos Tours. We didn't know what was Seajets responsible for. We didn't know who the guide was working for. We didn't even have anybody guiding us properly to where to go when we first arrived at the Port of Rethymno to catch the ferry in the morning. Considering the price charged per person, and the way this tour is described in the tour agent website, I would expect a much better service to be provided. This was overall an awful experience. I feel particularly sorry for my young children that had to go through this during their holiday. I understand that the tour agent cannot predict mechanical problems causing a delay in the ferry journey, but there was much more wrong and predictable in this trip that should never have happened. Some of the staff didn't look after and didn't care properly about the clients interests and needs. The advert for this tour is misleading and misrepresents what is actually offered on the day. I contacted Platanos Tours directly and made a formal complaint about everything that went wrong in this tour, but they have not bother to reply to me yet. The poor service customer continues even after the tour.