My boyfriend and I bought the Valentine's Day Dinner Cruise offer on Buytopia; the offer was $99 for a 3 hour cruise with a buffet and Swarovski Austrian crystal earrings valued at $110. I'm just going to start this off by saying that I did not expect the cruise to come with a comedy show--we did have to exchange a couple commodities to get this show, but still.
The Boat (The "Burrard Queen")
- filthy, windows were not clean, window panes had dust and dirt all over them with general scrap
- The seats were extremely cramped due to too many tables in the small area (i.e. The back of the seat of the people next to us was at our table)
- the tables themselves were tiny
- The women's bathrooms were shut down in the middle of the cruise due to clogging, and half of the men's bathrooms didn't have toilet seats (in spite of having actual toilets)
The Service and Cruise:
- The boat started moving about forty minutes after the cruise had "begun" (we were scheduled to leave at 19:00 and didn't leave until 19:40, even though seating was from 18:30-19:00 and everyone was on-board). So it wasn't a three-hour cruise, it was more like a two hour and some change cruise.
- The waitress came to our table first to ask for drinks when there were roughly five other couples on board (we were very early), when we asked for a few minutes to think, she didn't come back for another 40 minutes, and that was only because my boyfriend went and reminded her that we're still waiting. Then she proceeded to bring us the wrong wine and walk around the entire cruise asking every table whether or not they ordered red wine. We ended up getting our wine half an hour after we ordered it despite being right next to the bar.
- It was a sight-seeing cruise, but we didn't see any sights other than downtown Vancouver
- The "Swarovski Austrian crystal" earrings are fashion jewelry you'd find at a dollar store, literally, with Asian typing at the bottom of the earrings right below the text "fashion jewelry" (and so clearly not from Austria)
- The debit and credit machines were stolen the previous night, so they had to go and find a debit/credit machine from the office, which was actually just one machine that was out of batteries and had to be charged before every single transaction. Despite being the third couple in line, we waited half an hour just to pay for our wine.
- There was no dancing; there was absolutely no room to dance, so that was clearly false advertisement, too.
The Buffet:
- After waiting an hour and a half to finally have the buffet be ready, we arrived just to find that the buffet was not at all as advertised. Here's the advertisement:
"Choose from an entree of baked salmon with dill and lemon or teriyaki chicken, served with roast potatoes, sauteed vegetables, a salad bar, triple chocolate cake with real whipped cream for dessert, and coffee or tea"
In reality, it was black pepper salmon, the chicken was arguably teriyaki, there were actually roast potatoes, and the sauteed vegetables were just sauteed carrots, there were only scraps of salad left, and the bread basket was empty.
- They had quite clearly run out of food by the time they reached the other end of the boat where we were sitting. The couple at the table next to us didn't even get any food and had to go and eat elsewhere afterwards.
The Host:
- He continually asked for a "sexy" volunteer, and did not stop saying sexy after no one had laughed for the first five times. When a volunteer finally came up, he said, "Look at her? Isn't she sexy. Like a cheerleader..."
- As part of the night's entertainment, they had a poetry contest where the winner(s) would win a free dinner cruise. When a girl had come up with her last-minute poem entry, he asked her to read it out loud, and when she said "no", he said, "She doesn't love you that much."
- He degraded the captain of the boat, calling him polish derisively as his introduction and that he's the "little, weird-looking guy crawling around on the ground who cannot speak or understand English"
- At the end of the night when there was absolute chaos, he said, "Good work, girls. I'm going home" and just left
- Continually brought up the point that he had been robbed and constantly was flirting with one of the waitresses
All-in-all, I'm giving this three stars because the food was good, we had a lot of laughs, the boat didn't sink, and it was definitely memorable--just not in the way that we had expected it to be. read more