I would put negative stars if I could. I booked a tour through take tours booking agent for me and 3 family members and ended up with be taken by Happy Vacation tour line. We chose a Friday for our Niagara Falls / DC tour so that it would go to upstate NY and make its way to Howes Cave ,close to Albany where I live. We confirmed prior to purchase that we could join the tour their, just 40 minutes from our house. Suddenly we were informed that they will not be going to Howes Cave because of the July 4th Holiday weekend (our Tour was for July 5th, Friday), and we had to get up at 2:45AM to leave by 3:30am to make it to grab our bus in Chinatown by 7:30am. We get there, and if you are not that familiar with Chinatown, well you had better know that it is one of the most filthy places you can go in the United States, its gross.. and its a shame that they cannot live a clean life. So we get shuffled from the first meeting point to a second meeting point, then they have us hanging around for 30 minutes, then ask us if we care that the tour has to be reversed in order..and we didn't really know how we felt and just wanted to be cooperative and helpful so we said, sure.. whatever you need. So they then shuffle us to a different street.. and have us hang out for a while then board this terrible bus that is literally falling apart.. has missing grills, rusted spots that were just partially sanded and repaired... dirty, etc.. Get on.. its completely humid and hot inside.. bus driver has the bright idea of not turning on the bus to cool it down for all of its passengers. He is absurdly obese, and has not moved from his seat the entire day, until the buffet at dinner! He apparently does not care for his own health or safety or that of his passengers. Because of an irregular pattern in a section of the highway and his weight, he began bouncing up and down in the chair..and it began squeaking excessively ..and all I could think of that it sounds like a movie sound of a couple having nooky upstairs :) ..passengers were quietly cracking up. The bus driver proceeds to say frustratingly to the tour guide, that this bus is falling apart and began to confirm when we will arrive at the hotel and how long are we there so that he can have a bus swapped out. Ok.. i've gotten ahead of myself... We were supposed to leave by 8am, we did not get out of their until 8:45am and it was hot and muggy . With only had a few chinese people on the bus from which I learned speak english for the most part & the tour is not in our country's language, English, its also in mandarin. The tour guide, Justin, has no passion, could care less to connect to the passengers and rapidly blares out quick statements about this or that in English and Mandarin like a drone, opposed to asking the handful of Chinese if they are fluent in english and mind the tour be in english as its simply more efficient and Justin was completely overwhelmed with all the apparent confusion with the tour operator and overbooking (although our bus only had 29 guest). The microphone hardly worked and he mic checked literally, at least 60-80 times through July 5ths day of the tour.. static .. feedback.. squelching.. instead of simply talking to the group with his own voice which would have been perfectly manageable. He proceeds to start to sell us tickets to upcoming non inclusive parts of the tour.. and thats neat for being organized, but there is more to it. We join the DC cruise, he says $23/ each , find out on the cruise that it was $20 to the general public. The cruise was terrible by the way.. the cruise ship, 149 passenger indoor a/c , was nice.. guides again did not connect at all with the passengers.. just rattled off a bunch of facts in english and again in mandarin . So we end up at this buffet tonight and are told $16 a person including drink and tip (keep in mind its a buffet! - no one serves you). I am in line and I notice that its $12.85 on the sign in front of me. The two girls ahead noticed the same thing and wanted to pay the normal price and not the inflated price. The manager defended his sudden inflated price until I jumped in and had to threaten to call the authorities. These Chinese restaurant managers and operators along with the chinese tour operators are trying to scam their own people and innocent tour attendees which is despicable. They should be ashamed of themselves. Even worse was the food. A complete filthy mess. -- fruit in huge chunks and no flavor and barely edible -- sushi was dry old and tasted terrible -- ice cream spewed liquid chocolate and terrible vanilla ice cream. Just plain dirty. -- I could not bring myself to eat any meat or seafood but others at my table felt sick to eat anymore than the lite they had. Just go somewhere else and eat less and higher quality. This is just day 1.. and our family is having a good time anyway.. but there is no way I would ever choose these sleazy, underhanded hustlers for a tour read more

2 stars for service. 4 stars for the places we visited on the tour. Touring with a Chinese traveling agency has its ups & downs. At first it may seem cheap. I had low expectations because I knew what I was walking into & boy was there a major catch. I went on a 4 day trip to Canada with my mom, sister & boyfriend. When you book the tour, you pay for tickets for the seats, their deal was buy 3 tickets, get 1 free BUT after you get on the bus, you find out that you have to pay couple hundred more for tickets for places that we had to visit. Initially our trip was suppose to start on Thursday but we got a call asking if we can move it to Friday. We were fine with that since there was no school. Day 1: If you lived in Flushing, there's a meeting place there by the church & if you lived in Chinatown, there's a meeting place in front of their office. We got there super early searching for a coach bus which is what we expected to get on. Turns out we had to get on those small shuttle buses. If you google "small shuttle buses," you'll be disappointed if you were expecting a big coach bus. It took us to Chinatown where they picked up the rest of the people. We were furious because we didn't pay to travel on a shuttle bus. Everyone paid to travel on a coach bus. They told us that we will change buses the next day. Okay fine. We started traveling to Albany where we made a pit stop at McDonald's for bathroom & food. Then we continued our way to Ausable Chasm. Here we hiked and the scenery was beautiful which ultimately led to a rafting ride. Our stop after crossing the border to Canada was Chinatown in Montreal. Here we stop by to walk around & grabbed dinner on our own & met back at the bus at a certain time. After dinner, the tour guide brought us to our first hotel which was at Hilton Garden Inn. This hotel was amazing which included a gym & a swimming pool. We didn't know that we should have bought something for breakfast for the next day. Day 2: Early morning, we were so hungry but we packed our bags & continue on with our tour. We visited St. Joseph Oratory of Mount Royal. The church was really nice especially when you go all the way up but my boyfriend & I somehow took one too many pictures with the amazing view that we ended up getting separated with the tour. We ended up being the last ones back into the bus. Next stop was at Montreal Olympic Stadium where our tour guide took responsibility to get our group into the place first over all the other dozen tour groups that were there. Another place with an amazing view looking over Montreal. Next we finally found a place to get breakfast before we went into the Montreal Biodome. We can view the animals so much closer than how we view the animals here in NYC. A lot of the exhibits didn't have a glass that separated you from the animals. Next was another couple hours to Ottawa. We were brought to a very touristy place but they had really good hot dog & poutine. After staying at this place, our tour drove us another couple hours to the Thousand Islands. Here was the place where we were going to change our bus to a coach bus! On the coach bus there were another half of the group. After changing buses, we took a boat tour that showed us the Thousand Islands. It took us across the border & back via water. We stayed at Sheraton hotel (another nice place) Day 3: CN Tower, Downtown Toronto with the glass floors. Oh man, Ripley's Aquarium was right next to it & I wish that it was included in the tour because we don't have big aquariums like that in NYC. We had another relaxing boat ride after this. After that we went to Skylon Tower in Niagara Falls. Here we watched a dumb movie which I regretted paying for about the Niagara Falls & had lunch inside the tower. The restaurant spins very slowly so it was a really cool experience to eat & see the view change. We were then taken to the Maid of the Mist where we got to skip the super long line. This event was probably one of the best on this tour. After we can walk around & visit places on our own & had to meet back at a certain time. We had to cross the border after this which took quite a while due to traffic. We were brought to our hotel called Quality Inn in Batavia, NY. This hotel was complete crap compare to the first two places. If they were aiming for low quality, they got it down. I visited the Walmart supercenter at night since it was opened 24 hours & bought some food & snacks for the long trip back home. Day 4: On our last day we went to Corning Glass Museum where everything is literally made of glass. After that we were taken to a crappy buffet place in the middle of nowhere. I've tried better buffets in NYC for this price. The food was stale & disgusting. The bathroom was so filthy. After this, it was time to go home with a couple pit stops along the way. read more

I booked reservations of Canada curious trip at happy vacations a few months ago. Ms. Gene Yong is very sweet and helpful. she told me that she will do price adjustments if the price is dropped before the final payment day. A month before the final day, I got a call from Ms. Yong. The price was dropped. I went to the office and put down a little more deposit and saved $800 on my trip. Ms. Yong called again a week later. I saved again $ 300 more at this time. and she told me she will continue check the price for me until the last day. I was very impressed her kindness and caring about her customers. I will definitely go back to them again. read more