tcsworldtravel.comReviews of tcsworldtravel.com

This is a very expensive trip! What was great - the plane and the plane staff - absolutely flawless aside from some meals when served on a trolley; the sites visited which is why people go on the trip; the hotels - absolutely wonderful, aside from Australia; the tour leader Andrea who knew we were not happy but did every thing she could to fix things/make it better - she was outstanding. What was not so great - 1) we thought we were signing up for private jet travel and FBOs. Instead we went through commercial airports and stood in security lines, immigration lines, walked to commercial gates, ad nauseum - with one exception (I think is was Egypt). We were told we could leave stuff on the plane on our destinations but instead had to carry everything off with no assistance in some places and take our luggage to a van in a parking lot. I counted 26 security/immigration lines that we stood in. 2) the schedule was, to put it politely, nuts. We had to have our luggage out of our room often at 4 am and sometimes the night before we left. Because we were going through commercial airports, we needed to leave the hotels four hours in advance. We ended up skipping the Taj Mahal because it would have required buses to and from the airport, in-country flights, lines, security, etc. before flying 8 hours to Tanzania. 3) the promised lectures from two excellent academics seldom happened because the technology on the plane didn't work - that resulted in jamming in lectures between arriving some where and dinner in an already jam packed schedule. As I said to Andrea, I feel like I'm in the army. 4) not TCS's fault but just about everyone got sick - we were all croaking by the time we arrived back in Orlando to wait for our luggage in the commercial airport baggage claim, to take the train to our hotel. 5) Every inquiry that I made prior to the trip was answered incorrectly - can I take hiking sticks to Machu Picchu (no - but in fact you could), can I leave medication that required refrigeration on the plane (yes - but in fact we couldn't); can we have oxygen portable cans in Cusco (yes - but instead we arrived to find a hospital-grade tank in our room), are we going through FBOs (yes but in fact we didn't). There were other people on the trip who had traveled with TCS before and said that they had always gone through FBOs. Not sure why this changed. I gave this three stars because the contrast between what was excellent (which was really excellent) and what was awful (which was really awful) resulted in an average. I would never recommend this company to any one who expects first class service. It did not live up to what was promised/implied by their PR. But Andrea was great!