Great New York Tours
“We had a great tour guide who told us stories about the ghost of FDR's dog and the scene of many hangings in Washington Square Park.”
“They are usually on Groupon or Living Social but are a bit pricey without the deal…”
“Walter, our guide, was kind enough to save a couple of cookies for my kids.”
Great New York Tours
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Bike Parking: Yes
Price range.
$$ Price range Moderate
8 reviews
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My fiance and I went on the Great New York walking food tour this past weekend and had a great time! We first met the group in front of Village Cigars by 7th Ave South. The tour started right one time with our very knowledgeable tour guide. When we first began the tour, I liked how he stopped to tell us fun facts at different points. My favorite of course was when we stopped in front of the building that was the key point for FRIENDS. I was super excited about that since it's my favorite show! He also stopped us in front of where one of the first speak-easy's was and taught us how the term "86 it" was created in that spot–awesome!
Our first stop was Bleeker Street Pizza–WOW. You can find out why it was wow in my review. I liked how we got a full slice each–I was worried we'd get jipped with a "sampling."
Next was biscous ciao for macarons. Personally, I've never had them before, but wow that dark chocolate one was good!
Next stop was Bagels on the Square. This was probably my least favorite stop, mainly because the sample given was a quarter of an everything bagel with bacon, horseradish cream cheese. I'm definitely not a fan of everything bagels or horseradish so I took a few bites and then passed it over to my fiance. I just thought that was quite bold of a sample choice.
Next up was Molly's Cupcakes. Most adorable decor for a shop…ever! It's set up to look like a classroom with desk-looking tables and chairs, lunch boxes on the walls and games and books on shelves. My fave part–the swing seats at the bar! Cool! Take a look at what I thought of the cupcakes in my review…
Porto Rico Importing Co was up next for a small coffee sampling. Considering the amount of coffee beans in that place, you'd think we could get a full cup instead of a little dixie cup? But the heavenly smell inside the store made up for that…swoon.
Last was Bruno's Bakery for a cannoli. It was a delicious cannoli although being Italian, I did not appreciate that the middle of my shell being hallow and not filled with delicious filling 🙁
Overall, the tour was a great experience. I think we'll sign up for another when more deals come around! They are usually on Groupon or Living Social but are a bit pricey without the deal… Happy Touring!
We purchased the cupcake tour on groupon which was great for 20 normally 50. For 20 great deal not for 50. The guide was great but getting a hold of someone from the company was not easy to check on conditions and we needed to go to the website to get meeting location. Four stars for our tour guide Marci 2 stars for the tour company. We may return.
My best friend's fiancé purchased the groupon for the cupcake tour so we wouldn't spend all day shopping… We were a little hesitant at first, given our guide walked around with a cupcake hat and told jokes about cupcakes but it ended up being a great time. It's a good walk, and you get samples from great places we haven't tried before. I've even found my new favorite spot! The sample sizes were perfect and we were feeling quite stuffed by the time we finished. The biggest complaint, and only complaint I have is that at the end if the tour, our guide asked for a gratuity. Gratuity should never be asked for and made the crowd feel uncomfortable.
Wow. I have to say what a disappointment the Drunk History Tour is. I DO NOT recommend. There is not much in the way of history NOR are you taken to any historical pubs or any interesting pubs for the matter. Your day will be spent listening to very little history, shelling out cash at the pubs because drinks ARE NOT included (you get a free shot WITH drink purchase) and you will have to drink quickly because it's a two hour tour (equating to about 20-25 min at each pub). Don't expect your tour guide to teach you any history while you're drinking either – you'll be left to your own devices. And they don't help you navigate the lines – you have to wait for your drink like any other customer. Huge disappointment.
Reserved a food walking tour in Greenwhich Village. I am leaving a bad review because:
The tour was cancelled, but, we were not notified.
Customer service was hard to get a hold of – hard to find correct phone number or e-mail
Meeting location was not easy to find
Our advised meet up location:
110 7TH AVE SOUTH, NEW YORK, NY 10014.
So we arrived at this address as per the GPS and as per the taxi driver, but, when we arrived, the 110 civic address could not be found!
To help you:
Here is a picture of the metro station to get off at if advised to meet at this address…. This metro station was just in front of the meeting place! Christopher St Station 1 Downtown.
Luckily, a man in the cigar shop at this address is helpful. He is by no means affiliated with the tour.
Real too bad for this experience because my sister and I were visiting from Montreal and we really want to like it.
Dang, I'm glad I didn't read the other reviews before booking our tour because I likely would not have! But it all worked out for us, so I'm grateful for that. It probably all depends on your tour guide as ours was fantastic.
We booked our tour through Living Social because there was a good deal. (Always check those coupon sites when you're doing tours because the deals seem to be always available.)
We visited five pizza joints ranging from Bleeker Street to Lombardi's while getting a nice historical account of the pizzerias, pizza itself and the neighborhoods, and we even stopped in front of Martin Scorsese's old place. The walking around was definitely necessary because the tour ordered boxes of pizza, rather than a slice for each person, so there were always several leftover slices.
It did get a little disorganized when the pizzas weren't ready at one of the locations. Our tour guide basically made us circle the block because it's not like a group of a dozen people could hang around on the sidewalk or inside in the small space waiting for pizza.
Tours are nice just to get an insider's view of a city and visiting points of interest that we otherwise would not have known. It was also nice to try all the pizza of course, but I wish I wasn't extremely full by the end of it because I didn't enjoy that slice as much.
Be sure to bring your own drink or be prepared to stop by a corner store. We did have extra time while we waited for the pizza to be made. The tour also ended at the last spot, like it didn't take you back to the original starting point. I'd say we were quite far from our starting point. So keep that in mind.
This review is based solely on their shocking booking system and customer service. Didn't actually get as far as being able to schedule the Cupcake tour that we'd bought through Groupon…
Firstly, I think long and hard before even considering a one star review. However, as I have wasted a lot of time thanks to this company, hopefully others can save themselves the trouble of going down the same path.
Imagine this scenario: you are planning a weekend away & go to book a hotel room online – you chose your dates & it shows availability. Sometimes the systems show you all upcoming available dates. Simple, right? Apparently not so for the Great New York Tours system. Initially we'd checked to see that there were options showing for the weekend and, based on that, made arrangements for a few other things to do in NYC. Friends also booked for the tour and planned to join us.
Then when I went to book (it was still showing the date & times), it said no availability. It turns out that you have to try each date & every time slot then click through to the next page before you get the "no availability" message. I.e. you have to try EVERY date from now until there is a free slot. Not only that, the days & time slots were inconsistent with their website and I got different results trying multiple browsers (often getting error messages on Opera) and their Facebook booking options. I contacted "support" through their chat option and explained the issue with their website – their response was "have you checked the website?". Duh.
Fortunately we had all bought through Groupon, who attempted to sort it out with Great New York Tours (who gave Groupon a "corrected" URL, which was actually for another tour…) and then refunded us. After reading other reviewers' issues, I'm glad we didn't persevere. Will do a beer and wine tour of the area instead 🙂
me and my boyfriend went on the New-York Chocolate Tour. We found that thanks to Groupon so i can say that for the price we had a great time.
At the beguining we wanted to do the Brooklyn Tour but as there was not enough booking we had been scheduled with the Manathan tour.
I liked :
– The area was really nice : it is a cool walk
– The guide was stoping and giving us some funy stories about places (even thoses not linked to the tour) that was really nice
– We tried many different type of things which was good then we had no time to get bored of chocolate
– the tour was long enough t have some time to digest
I did not like :
– all the places were not that good, for exemple the macaron place wasn't the best especially for NY. I would have liked to be in a place more typical for exemple in the Chealsea market there was a much better place!
– The try we had wasn' much and sometimes not the specialty. i think depending on the tastes we could have a choice on what we wanted to try
– the guide did not even checked that we were all ready to leave for the tour
Could be better :
– I think it would be nice that people from the shop take some time to present the place
– We were too many in the Group it was hard to follow and we had to wait for a long time each time we wanted to change for a place to another. Many to make it more friendly we could have had a time to present ourselves and share what we like about chocolate
– Many time we were eating on the street because the place was to small… maybe chose another place or be a smaller group?
– We had no discussion and exchanges on the thing we were tasting which was a pitty i would have liked to speack with the others and know what they thought about it