Pancake Boat Amsterdam + Keukenhof: Entry + Return Bus Transfer

Excellent

I was not able to enjoy the Pancake Boat cruise at all because the earlier Keukenhof visit activity that I bought (as a discounted combo ticket, no less) went much later than expected so I missed... Show more

I was not able to enjoy the Pancake Boat cruise at all because the earlier Keukenhof visit activity that I bought (as a discounted combo ticket, no less) went much later than expected so I missed this activity.
The flowers at Keukenhof are beautiful, so that’s not the point of this review. I am unhappy because I missed the second activity (Pancake Boat) because the first activity (Keukenhof) was operated in such a disorganized way. The emailed instructions said to meet at a specific point at Centraal Station 20 minutes before the ticket time in order to get your voucher redeemed for a physical ticket. (But the description said to arrive there 10-15 minutes before the ticket time, which is misleading.) Anyway, I arrived 19 minutes before the ticket time, and the line was very long for all of us trying to get our physical tickets. From what I heard around me, the tour office was so overwhelmed that they were turning away people who just wanted to buy a ticket in-person for their excursions and instead only attending to the people with vouchers. Then when I got my physical ticket, a tour staff pointed outside the building and said there were 8 buses waiting for us. Come to find this was like a quarter or third mile away with no signage. Everyone was just blindly hoping everyone else was going the right place. Then at the bus are there were so many buses from so many bus companies, and none of them clearly stated which tour company they were for. I got into a long line (again, hoping all the other people holding the same ticket as me were right), and we figured out which bus company was ours (Bakker) but there were not 8 of them waiting for us. My ticket time was 15:00, and I couldn’t even get on a bus until 15:40. Meanwhile, all the other bus companies had no lines and were filling up and leaving the bus area one after another ahead of ours. Fast forward. We get to Keukenhof, and the bus driver tells us to take our stuff with us but come find the bus later, which would leave at 19:00. Nothing I saw in the description of this ticket purchase made it seem like we had a set time to return. It read more like a hop on, hop off situation—that we could take any returning bus back to Centraal Station. Well, since that was not the case and not adequately communicated in the ticket description, I completely missed a 19:30 excursion I had pre-booked (in a discounted combo deal, as stated before!). But it gets worse. When getting off the bus, the driver clearly told us to be back in time for 19:00 departure to bus 146. I confirmed the number on our bus, and several others on the bus actually took photos of the bus number and license plate. Well, when I returned to the bus pickup at 18:25, it was no longer where we had gotten off. I walked around looking at all the Bakker buses, and none of them were 146. This continued all the way up to 19:00. I found others from my original bus who were looking for it, as well. When we asked other Bakker bus drivers if they could just let us on, they were unsympathetic (“I can’t read my colleague’s mind. That would be amazing. But I don’t know where he is or when he’ll be back.”) until about 18:5when they had to start admitting the other bus wasn’t there and wasn’t coming. Finally, right as the last buses of the day were leaving, one or two bus drivers took pity on us and told us to fill in the extra spaces on their bus. If I were to ever go again, I would get one of the regular shuttle buses or rent a car myself.

No pude asistir y preguntes si me.podian reembolsar no me contestaron