hsm wrote: Thanks for sharing.. we were looked at the local travel agents like SA tour & ChanBro, CTC etc.. but the prices were very ex for 4 of us.. so exploring these local tours which are $4-5k difference.. as we prefer to spend more time in shopping..
hmm.. still deciding.. hearing feedback from friends also, some said it was ok as they took the ChanBro F&E tour which is also joining the local tours when reach US.. ya, the group size will be huge like 50+ people.
having a good tour guide really depends on luck in this case...
For SA tour, we had 37 people. It was a tour conducted by SA guide. There was no local tour guide except in Montreal.
You did not say which part of US you are going. I recall doing west coast of US with insight tour during our honeymoon. The outlet was only an hour
FYI, from NYC (not sure if you are aiming that), you can take a day tour to woodbury. It's around US$45 per pax and it's a full day tour. Besides outlet, we also like Macy's, Marshalls and TJ Maxx.
This time round, we had 6 hours or so at Woodbury, a couple of hours at tanger outlet at atlantic city. One can choose to go to XXXXXXX or shop. DD and I went shopping while dh tried his luck at the XXXXXXX. There was another outlet where we had 1 hour plus. That was the impromptu stop. They also brought us to duty free at canada side to get cosmetics such as estee lauder, clinique, lancome, etc... we stopped at hersheys and grab good chocolate deals. It was really cheap. So there was lots of shopping + sightseeing (covered niagara falls, washington, philadelphia, boston, montreal, ontario, atlantic, NYC, ben & jerry, Hersheys). I was keen on shopping but dh was like... we are already there, let's cover all sights in the east coast of US.
Yes, I agree alot depends on luck. Our guide was not perfect but she was flexible and hope to let us cover as much and a good experience, we found her coverage on the state history, etc... so so. But yes, we were lucky as we had beautiful weather when we were there in June. It was cool and nice. On the last day of the tour, there was the next group from SA. Their flight was delayed due to SQ plane problem. They were supposed to arrive at 11am in JFK but only did so in the late afternoon so they couldn't do statue of liberty on the 1st day and sort of upset the tight schedule. Also the weather was starting to turn hot, etc...
Have you considered self-driving or taking internal flights? We paid around S$2.1k per person for the local tour only. We got our own tickets through redemption. But it's actually cheap to get the entire package from agent provided the flight arrangement is flexible. Eg. you can consider extending in NYC to catch broadway shows, more shopping, etc.... Yes the 2.1K is more expensive than tours4 fun but I think you need to compare the itinerary coverage, hotels, food coverage, etc....