EF Educational Tours - Toronto, Ontario

Lynn R.

J'ai aimé visiter les forêts tropicales mais j'ai trouvé faire 3 forêts tropicales dans 6 jours un peu répétitif. Notre guide Alonso était fantastique. Nous l'avons beaucoup apprécié.
J'ai trouvé le prix trop élevé. Nous étions supposé de partir le 7 mars mais nous n'avons pas parti avant le 9 mars. EF n'a pas remboursé les gens pour les deux jours que nous avons perdu. De plus, je n'ai pas aimé deux des quatre "hôtels" que nous avons été assignés. Les chambres (cabines) n'étaient pas propres et elles étaient mal entretenues.
La nourriture était fantastique. Les gens étaient très accueillants par contre. Nous avions beaucoup temps de libre le soir mais aucune chose à faire. Seulement deux des quatre hôtels avaient une piscine.
Je ne ferais pas ce voyage encore. Je n'ai pas trouvé une valeur pour le prix que j'ai payé.

K B.

Paid $400 for my child to enjoy this experience, ended up cancelling over a year in advance due to a scheduling conflict. They only refunded me a whopping $36 lol why pay for the insurance when they just take your money anyway.

Alberta G.

EF Tours planning created a large failure in the overall tour package. The original flight from Canada to Europe had a connecting flight in Europe to get to the final destination to where the tour was to begin. EF Tours planning allowed only one hour and twenty minutes between flights. This was to provide time for everything from landing, disembarkation and movement through the airport. Such a short period of time between flights almost guaranteed there would be a problem. Industry standard suggest 2 to 3 hours between connecting flights. As you can probably guess there was a problem in that the departing flight from Canada was delayed by one hour and as a result, the students missed their connecting flight in Europe. This hung up the tour in Europe without the kids being able to begin, their tour on the dates specified. So the student tour spent eight hours in the airport and then had to spend the entire next day trying to travel to their destination to begin their tour so they missed all the tours that were supposed to happen that day. This first day contained the bulk of all touring for this country destination. There was no back up plan to recoup the sites and cultural dinner that was missed. The end result is that one connecting flight pretty much eliminated the student tour doing any sightseeing in one country, which was half of their destinations. This was avoidable if EF Tours would have allowed for more time between connecting flights. Instead, their decision to move ahead with this with such a little time between flights created a high risk of failure that was irresponsible. The rest of the tour was good but missing such a large part of the tour was significant.

I would not recommend.

Tried to contact EF Tours via their website and email but after 14 days they did not reply.
I called their support team they said they had no record of my email but I have their auto reply. I asked to speak to a manager and was told someone would call me back. No one called back.

Tammy C.

UPDATE: I got a call from Amanda, one of the reps who was very helpful. She was able to waive the cancellation fee. We were not refunded the $350 in insurance that we did not use and could not transfer to a different trip outside their organization.

This company is very transparent about their cancellation policy. Just remember, as always, buyer beware. Only sign up if you are 100% certain that you want to go. If you aren't certain, wait and see who else is going before you commit.

Our experience: We signed up for a school trip 15 months before the trip because they offered a bonus $200 off to cover the mandatory insurance (which takes effect the date of departure). Something came up and we tried to cancel 2 months later (13 months before the trip). After pleading our case, they waived the $400 cancellation fee, but we are still out the $350 for the "free" trip interruption insurance and Cancel anytime insurance (which doesn't even really take effect until after flights and accommodation are booked). They purchase the insurance policies on your first deposit. Also, keep in mind that the amount they initially quote does not include their mandatory gratuities which you will now know until closer to the trip.

Only sign up if you are 100% certain you will not cancel. The early enrolment discount becomes a nonrefundable fee that you must pay if you cancel after 30 days, even if that is 13 months before the scheduled trip.

Emily H.

We had a trip to Greece planned for months with this tour company and they completely screwed us over with their last minute planning. They offered us $100 as compensation (on a nearly $4000 trip) for loosing basically 2 full days in Athens. They also didn't even consider pushing back our return flights to make up for the lost days. The day before we were supposed to fly out they cancelled the trip all together.

Alexandra S.

DO NOT TRAVEL WITH EF (PART 1)
In my opinion EF educational tours is not a good company to travel with. I recently traveled with my school to Paris and Barcelona, and my expectations were way to high for what we got. Sure I ended up having a decent time, when it was free time and I could buy what I wanted (to actually eat something) or go where I wanted with my friends (not with the tour group)
Of course, Barcelona and Paris are beautiful cities, so the tours we did were okay, but there were many things wrong with the trip and the tour company and the way things were organised.
First of all, the trip was advertised as a 8 night 9 day trip. When they released the itinerary, it ended up being a 6 night 7 day trip. The tour company totally changed the itinerary and didn't want to do anything about the 2 lost days that we payed for.
The tour company had made us believe that we were leaving on the Friday or the Saturday before the march break. In reality, we departed on the Wednesday before march break, missing 3 full days of school. AGAIN they changed something on us.
Before we even left, EF posted the Itinerary and flight details for the trip 47 days before departure. This is a problem because if you want your full refund (although you have to pay a $400 cancellation fee) you need to contact them before 45 days.
Between 110-45 days you get a full refund minus your insurance and minus $400! Already ridiculous.
When we saw the Itinerary, we wanted to cancel the trip.
We called the tour company on day 43, and they said too bad and only 50% refund would be issued, not including the $300 insurance, cancellation and refund costs.
We understood that if it is company policy, it makes sense, but they should've given us more than 2 days before they knew people would only get 50%. (AND people that didn't buy the $99 cancellation insurance would get nothing refunded past 45 days!)
When we tried to reach out, they pretended to care and said the manager would call us back the next day. But Donna ended up reaching out 4 days later. And when she did Donna said she couldn't do anything.
I was also upset to know that we would be having a connected flight going there and coming home, with an extensive number of hours in the layover country.
When they did the presentation the tour company had told us that they would get direct flights, but it wasn't a promise. I didn't expect to be spending 2 full days of my trip travelling.
Since my tour was the 6th to the 13th, that only really left 6 extremely tiring, jet lagged days to spend in both Paris and Barcelona.
We flew with American Airlines to Philladelphia and then to Paris, and the overnight flight to Paris was questionable. The food was terrible and tasted like dirt (I'm not a picky eater at all and I couldn't even swallow it)
And typical American Airlines lost luggages while we were going there.
When we got to the hotel in Paris, I was informed I would be in a room with 5 other people, another thing not as advertised, since it was supposed to be 4 people to a room to my knowledge.
Since it was an overnight flight and we got there early morning, we had a full day of touring ahead of us.
And don't forget that the EF traveller app is a joke!! They told my parents there would be daily updates with pictures and postings from the tour guide, but they didn't do anything. They also said they would post the flight information (the landing and flight details) but they never did! The first 2 days of the trip they didn't even post anything at all, not what we did or where we went at all. Another lie.

Alexandra S.

it went even more downhill. (PART 2) try and find part 1 under this same name!
FOOD:
the dinner they fed us on the first night in Paris was a joke. the restaurant in Paris was nothing we were expecting.
They sat us in a dark damp basement dungeon underneath the restaurant, and they gave us just plain lettuce with dressing as a "salad"
the dinner was nothing less than an appetizer, it being a thin tortilla with some cheese and minuscule pieces of ham. "But it's all you can eat"
All you can eat what? a snack? not what I was expecting.
The vegetarian option was the same thin piece of tortilla with raw veggies on it. Great as a snack, not a dinner.

The other restaurants they sent us to were also a joke, very small portions, "salad" that was just lettuce and dressing, food with absolutely no seasoning, no variety, definitely NOT anything french like they said. They just plopped us down at whatever restaurant would seat our group I guess. I spent the trip hungry and having to buy my own food.
We had to uber eats mcdonalds to the hotel every night since my friends and I were hungry.

The breakfasts at both the hotels weren't that bad. They had sufficient food but the only thing that made them bad was the fact that the only fruit I had the whole 7 days was an orange in Paris, and some bitter fruit salad. In Barcelona at least they had oranges every morning but nothing else.

To say the least, I lost weight on this trip. They weren't feeding us up to the standard of what they hyped it up to be, and not enough for jet lagged teenagers who were walking over 25,000 steps a day.

When we got off the 7 hour train from Paris to Barcelona, we got on a coach bus on our way to dinner. Within the first 3 minutes of driving, our coach crushed an Audi wagon between the sidewalk and the bus when he was making a right turn. AND he tried to drive away and not get out or anything. Dangerous.

So, if your are prepared to go on a trip where your not going to eat properly, be lied to about your itinerary, and realize your money vanished into thin air, sure spend your $4000 and travel with EF.
But I would say save your money and go on your own trip for way cheaper.

Valerie

DO NOT BOOK BIGGEST SCAM! You try to give your kids a better life and this company just steals hundreds/ thousands of your money even if you get the cancel for any reason/anytime insurance B.S. We cancelled over 200days before the trip because we are tired of getting the run around if the trip has been approved by our school board. The latest email we got stated “ that it is safe to assume the trip is approved because there is a lot of students enrolled” please do not book with this company I wish I read the reviews before.