Mar 8, 2024
Made our Trip - Our first night the tour was cancelled due to weather. The company offered a free backup plan for a small group tour to the whale museum with private tour guide. Learned a lot about whales and the northern lights. Really neat! Patrick was very funny and very passionate/knowledgeable about whales and the whole industry. Free northern lights drink at the end which was a nice touch.
The beautiful thing is if your tour is cancelled you can book another boat tour that works with your trips schedule. We went the next night and saw beautiful northern lights that were all different colours. Really made our trip to Iceland complete. They even offer heavy duty overalls to help mitigate the cold winds if needed. Guide on the boat was fantastic and very knowledgeable as well. Thank you Special Tours! Would definitely recommend booking with them!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Feb 13, 2024
Live to be on Lilja… - We are so grateful for having to get on the boat , Lilja and Andrea every night for a chance to see the Northern Lights . Appreciated much . We saw a glimpse on our 6th night . Anika was so gracious and very informative. Patrick was so hilarious and informative as well. Thank you much for such beautiful nights on board .
Review provided by Viator
Jan 17, 2024
Excellent - Excellent service watched the sky dance on board, as soon as we arrived we were told to go on top deck that the lights had started, we watched a full display until we arrived back to dock!! Highly recommend
Review provided by Viator
Dec 2, 2023
Amazing tours, super factual - The reception workers were amazing, so happy to help and super friendly. We booked to travel on the boat to see the northern lights on Thursday 30th of November, sadly we didn’t get to see them, but they let us book on the very next day free of charge. We were successful on this trip and got to see the lights as well as learn such amazing facts. This company we’re very organised and couldn’t be more helpful.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Oct 30, 2023
Wow! - What a brilliant trip! The crew, especially the guide, were so knowledgeable and helpful. We kept warm inside until we reached the darkest area, then came out on deck to an unbelievable show. The captain constantly moved the boat around to give us the best views and the guide pointed out specific areas. We were even lucky enough to see some shooting stars! Would highly recommend this amazing trip!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Dec 26, 2023
Excellent Northern Lights boat tour - Chasing the Northern Lights from the sea is an amazing experience. This is a wonderful, well organized boat tour. The staff are absolutely lovely, kind, friendly and professional. The boat is well-maintained and comfortable, which helped as the sea was quite rough. If we'd seen the elusive Northern Lights, it would have been perfect. I would highly recommend this tour and company to anyone.
Review provided by Viator
Feb 11, 2024
Disappointing. You're better off trying yourself or booking a private tour. - Went twice (retry). On the 2nd retry the clouds were ok, but the other values were the lowest over the entire 10 days I stayed there. Expected a probably of roughly 5% (Polarlicht App) around 23:00, which was in the end the case. That is why I’ve asked them a day before, if I could change my free retry into a whale watching tour, which has the same price, but this was denied. I still went since I didn't feel like getting drunk on a night out and only had 2 days left before leaving (fortunately I've seen the aurora before).
The positive first. The boat is in good condition and they seem to have the safety of their guest in mind. Plus points. The facilities offer heating, toilets, bar,… what you would expect from mass-tourist boat. They have different tour guides. Both of them were friendly. They will give you some trivia about the northern lights and on star gazing through a mic. Most of it you will already know, if you are familiar with the topic or know how to use Wikipedia. On the second tour I had a guy from the US who was actually funny. Enjoyed his talk.
They don’t drive out far. This is understandable. It would be rather risky to pack 100 to 200 tourists in a boat and get into trouble on high sea. But it consequently means that the light pollution from Reykjavik is still noticeable. Not that bad, that it would stop you from spotting the Aurora, but it is certainly is not helping your odds. From a pure light pollution and positioning consideration you might as well just travel to the “Northern Light View Point” and walk a little bit towards Grótta in the northwest of the city. That is just one example I've picked from the coastline i.e. close to where this tour is operating. Theere are other good/better spots depending on weather conditions.
Another drawback is that they only go out for roughly 2.5 hours in the early hours. You will back at port after 23pm'ish but definitely before midnight. The issue is that around Reykjavik in February the probability to spot something has most likely spike events around 11:30 to 01:30. You can see that on the Polarlicht App how the green (10 to 20%) probability zone moves in from the north east of Iceland to the south west of Iceland around midnight. I’ve inquired on this and got statements like that e.g. KP value doesn’t matter that much (yes it does and is one of many different values you have to take into considerations) or that it doesn’t matter staying longer (again yes it does). The way they communicate this really rubs me the wrong way and gave me the feeling that this is a corporation that counts on tourists having no clue about this and basically put everything on the “sometimes you’re lucky and sometimes not”. Yeah sure. That is somewhat true, but it is also true that you can increase your odds of sighting by taking according adjustments. I didn’t had the feeling this company is properly transparent about how they increase your odds (or not) for the money you pay them.
The free retries are theoretically indefinitely, if the company exists in the far future, if you will travel again to Reykjavik, if you don’t have already plans on the other nights,… or if you are not so frustrated that you just won’t. There are a lot of ifs and I have a suspicion the company knows that. They might offer you on a failed attempt some free shots at the bar or a whale museum discount. Ok. But in my case, I don’t really drink and I’ve been to whale museums and won’t go to another whale museum if there are actually real whales swimming in the very same bay.
I would have given 4 stars if they would have allowed to switch to the whale watching tour. Just so you have a viable alternative shortly before you go home when you (and everyone else using the publicly available data) clearly know the probability of sighting is very unlikely. Even 3 stars if they would be a bit more honest about the low likelihood.
Just fyi... I’ve paid more for a private tour and didn’t see the aurora and was totally ok with that, because the tour guide was super honest about it and I could see how he genuinely tried to increase the odds as much as possible. While my sister was still here (flew home a little bit earlier) we god so frustrated with the mass tourist offers that we rented a car and did it ourself using the Polarlight App and drove to the borders of the Reykjavik suburbs (Don’t drive out into the wilderness by yourself!!! Stay close to civilization, you don’t want to be the missing idiot tourists reported in the newspaper.). Guess what... at 23:50 we spotted the aurora with bear eyes. No camera needed. At a fraction of the cost and we had way more fun by ourself. Yes you'll need luck, but you can give your luck an extra boost, but I don't think you get that extra boost on this boat tour. Feel free to use this tour as it is indeed very convenient, but if you really really really want to see the Aurora, use different approaches.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Jan 29, 2024
Do not use, bad experience - Do not use, they still go out when cloudy and then you have experienced the boat ride and then youcannot have refund only other tries, super jeeps are better to see Northern lights as we saw on second try. These cancelled our second trip so have paid for nowt!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Dec 16, 2023
DO NOT BOOK - We booked this tour as we really wanted to see the northern lights whilst we were in Iceland. The main reason we went! We booked it for the first night and it got cancelled because of the weather, rebooked for the following night… got cancelled… rebooked it again for a third time… got cancelled. Did the back up tour which was going to a warehouse where they had plastic and rubber shaped whales dangling from the ceiling, and to rub salt into the wound was followed by a short video of the northern lights. Look what you could have won! We requested some type of refund because £50 a head was wasted and to have not seen the northern lights like we had planned was diabolical. Turns out they can get round the legalities of giving you a refund because they offer you to go see some rubber whales in a warehouse. Absolute joke and SHOCKING customer service. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY. £100 down the drain for us!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Apr 5, 2023
Chasing the aurora by boat is highly not recommended - It is not recommended to watch the aurora by boat. First of all, the boat was very bad. It was shaking violently for 2 hours. At the beginning of the trip, the announcement said we could go to the deck to see the aurora, but we went out in the cold and saw nothing! There were so many people on the boat that some locals suggested driving after the aurora even though they had not seen it several times. And want to complain the front desk ticket girl, her service attitude is very poor, do not know whether there is regional discrimination. We were told to be there at 10 p.m., we were there on time, and she said the boat had gone. Nor did I give you a phone call or email to inform you in advance. The management of this company was very chaotic. I do not recommend you to participate in this trip, which will make you very disappointed. I do not know why there are so many favorable comments, is it paid for?
Review provided by Tripadvisor