Would not recommend this company. Our family wanted to spend an afternoon on the water, we…read morecontacted Yacht Charters of Miami and they had a 70 foot Sunseeker available for charter. We were told to be at the Marina a little before 2, and we would have the boat for 4 hours at a price of 3000.00. We arrived with groceries in hand at 150pm. After calling a few times we were told where to go and waited to be met. At about 2:10 someone met us and told us we would get on the boat in 5-10 minutes. Keep in mind it was 90 degrees full force humidity and we had 9 bags of groceries in the hot sun. Every 10 minutes or so we were told it would be another 10 minutes. At 225pm I directly asked realistically what time we would get on, the response was, "realistically 2:30pm" - this dragged on until 3pm. We had 5 little kids and a newborn in the hot sun waiting to board the yacht.
At 3:00, we met the man in charge, the captain and the lady who was to help out, I believe her name was Paula. Not one apology for having us wait, no smiles, just told us to get on board. The first thing we were told was to take our shoes off, they didn't tell us any safety measures, didn't show us around, we just left the docks. At this point we asked if they would be giving us a discount for being an hour late, after checking with the boss they offered us a $230 discount off of the $3000.00 price. I thought it was a joke - to have 5 children and a newborn in hot sun waiting in hour is crazy, we spent more than that at the grocery store getting items for the boat that got ruined in the sun while waiting.
When we scheduled to charter the yacht we told them we had young kids, we wanted to drive around and also find a fun place for the kids to snorkel. They said they could do that and that they would have chips, snacks and drinks on board. Luckily we brought our own (although most got melted in the hot sun) because they didn't offer any chips or snacks.
The captain is the only reason why I didn't leave 1 star, he was nice and if we asked a question he would respond. Paula was horrible, she didn't help at all. When we stopped to swim she sat on the front of the boat and smoked. Wasn't friendly or polite. I asked for some life jackets for the kids, she pulled them out of a bench and they were soaking wet. They didn't have enough life preservers on board, and none that fit decent. Paula had a bat attitude from the start.
We will for sure be chartering a yacht every time we visit Miami - the kids loved being on the water. But, will never again use this company. From the bad attitudes, lack of apology being late and not giving us much of a fun day overall - I would never recommend to charter a boat from them. I have since looked at other companies and you can get a much nicer boat from a more reputable company for a lot less. Bottom line, we wanted to have a fun afternoon with our family - we still did, but were challenged by the bad attitudes and lack of professionalism of this company.
Side note - sorry for any typos, have a two year old jumping on me as I type ...
