Speedboat Ride & Architecture Cruise in Chicago

H.W. - This was a nice tour with an enthusiastic guide. The cruise itself was great. The process of buying the experience and working with Virgin was not. I was contacted so many times via email and phone, confirming the wrong experience, times, etc. Buy directly with the vendor instead.

I would discourage any trip leaving from Navy Pier because you have to deal with the river locks system, which took around 25 minutes to go in and out combined. That may be an outlier, but there are tours that leave from the riverwalk area and don’t have that problem. I give our guide credit for being engaging throughout all the down time but he treated it a bit like an open mic standup set and not as much like an informative tour. On top of that, it was a short tour. I’ve been on other tours that went further down the river and in more directions. The seats on the boat were really comfy though, and the speed ride around the lake at the end was neat.

On Navy Pier, there needs to be better signage directing patrons to the kiosk. There needs to be a better way to direct people to which line they should be in to board the boat. The tour guide on the boat is extremely negative in his comments about the city of Chicago. We also noted that the guide spent more time talking about how disgusting and dirty the river is, than he did about the architecture of the city. It was also very difficult to hear him from where we were sitting (toward the stern of the boat). Sitting at the back of the boat was a definite mistake as we were sucking in diesel fumes the entire trip. All in all, I'd not recommend this excursion to anyone and am very disappointed.