This tour was so close to boring me to death, I was about to be the only ghost you see that night…read more
We signed up for the last tour of the day in Old Town San Diego. The meeting address stated on the email sent regarding the reservation was just a general one, so we had to walk around a bit to find the tour group. After circling the park for a bit, we noticed there's no large group of people congregating anywhere, no signs, no lights, no indicators of any kind of where the starting point was. I eventually overheard the conversation of a few people talking behind us and turned back to ask about the Ghost Tour. This woman confirmed that we were in the right place. I lightheartedly commented on how I'm glad we've found them and that we were on the lookout for a sign of some sort. Clara was unnecessarily rude in her response saying "Well, yeah. This is a public park, and uh, look at what I'm wearing." Super snarky. Very catty. Totally uncalled for. It is also very important to point out that she was wearing a burgundy maxi skirt with a black blouse. Excuse my fashion senses for assuming that's perfectly normal. There's literally people in our tour group that dressed up as what most would consider to be more outlandish than what she wore and tried to pass off as a costume. I didn't want to ruin the start of our evening, so I swept this incident under the rug until my partner brought it back up in the car and stated how extremely rude our tour guide was. That interaction clearly didn't just look like that to me but to witnesses as well. Although this initial interaction was unpleasant, I was willing to give it a pass if the rest of the tour had gone well.
It did not.
Clara continued to be unprofessional throughout the entire evening. I can't even remember the intro because she spent a huge chunk of it complaining about the mosquitos. It's not a great way to hype up the crowd for an exciting night when you're reminding them of these literal bloodsuckers that are out to get them.
If you've ever been with a tour guide for any occasion, you would know that the storytelling component is one of the biggest parts of the entire experience. Clara is either brand new to the job, incompetent, or both. She constantly mixed up the stories, told events in an ineffective chronological order, and flipped words like someone who clearly just regurgitated words from a script that they never truly digested. It was obvious that she does not understand the history and context to the extent that a tour guide should.
Such a bummer because when I attempted to call the business and the voicemail picked up, whoever was on it sounded a lot more animated and fun. Where was that guy at?! But instead, we got stuck with CLARA.
Aside from the most significant factor of a quality storyteller falling short, there were other parts that made the whole experience lackluster as well. For one thing, we stayed in a tiny area consisting of a handful of homes for most of the tour. To make it even worse, all of the houses are under construction, so the fence and tarp was blocking the views almost entirely.
The reasons I'm not flat out giving this business a one star is because I understand that depending on who your tour guide is and how they're feeling that day, you could have a completely different experience. I also enjoyed playing with the pendulum, dowsing rod, and EMF reader. Overall, I'm willing to give a lot of grace to someone underperforming due to an off day or the fact that they're exhausted at the end of the night. But kindness and respect cost nothing, yet our guide wasn't willing to spare any. There was no warmth to her, and the passion was nonexistent during her storytelling. It was not at all an immersive experience that I was hoping for.
Even with the Groupon discount, this experience was most certainly not worth it. I truly feel for the unfortunate souls who paid full price if their experience was anything like mine.
