NORMANDY: Landing Beaches (Best Offer) - Private Day Trip from PARIS

Save your money and rent a car.

We booked a private tour to Normandy for a family of eight. As one of our party was disabled and reliant on a wheelchair, our travel agent made sure to verify that the tour operator was aware that accessibility was an issue. On the morning of our tour, our transport arrived with a driver and tour guide in a 9 passenger van. With the driver and tour guide, plus our 8 attendees, we had 10 people to travel to Normandy in a 9-passenger vehicle. I don't know how this situation occurred, but it did. We refused to attempt to cram 10 people in this vehicle, especially considering there were not enough seatbelts for our party. Our tour guide made some phone calls and Viator found another car and driver to transport 3 members of our party in a separate vehicle. Lining up additional transportation took an additional hour of our day and our tour left more than an hour late because of this issue. Now that our group was split into two cars (5 of our party, plus the driver and guide in one vehicle and the remaining 3 party members and a new driver in the second) we were concerned that the experience for our auxiliary vehicle would be downgraded as they had no tour guide in their vehicle and the driver spoke little English. This ended up not being a problem because it turns out that our tour guide did no "guiding" and barely spoke to us the entire trip, aside from explaining to us our itinerary/logistics and exchanging a few pleasantries. Honestly, we don’t exactly know what the tour guide was there for, as having a separate tour guide and driver seemed completely unnecessary. As part of our itinerary, we had expectations that our private tour would include 5 stops (Merville Battery, Pegasus Bridge, Omaha Beach, the American Cemetery of Colleville, and the Musee du Debarquement). While we did have 5 stops as planned, the Musee du Debarquement was NOT something we visited. Instead, we visited the Memorial Museum of Omaha Beach, which was a disappointment. It is not clear to me if there was an itinerary change because we were running an hour behind due to the transportation issue, or if there was another reason. Nothing was communicated to us by the tour guide and the fact that we weren’t going to be visiting the Musee du Debarquement was not made clear to us until we were on the expressway back to Paris. While our tour guide was friendly and nice, we were under the understanding that we had booked a private TOUR of Normandy… not just transportation. If we had realized that no guiding would occur, we would have rented our own private transportation and visited Normandy on our own. The price of car rentals and admissions to the attractions we visited would have been a fraction of the cost of this tour that we booked, which as far as tours go, ended up being a MAJOR disappointment. Our tour guide provided no information for us concerning Normandy, the sights we visited, or anything else. In fact, we were left to our own devices at all of the locations we visited. If we had known this was going to be the case, I would have at least brought a guide book with us. In reading through reviews now that we are home, I see another post by a client who had a similar experience with the lack of an actual tour guide. Hearing that our experience was not in isolation, I can’t in good conscience recommend this tour to anyone. In the middle of our tour, we did reach out to the travel agent who booked the tour for us. She requested a full refund for our tour on our behalf, which I didn’t realize she’d do. Someone contact me via text, while on the way back to Paris from Normandy, to ask if we could discuss when we returned to Paris. While I can imagine the tour operator didn’t want to lose the full cost of our booking (I can’t blame them as the travel was quite far away and the transportation did work out in the end), the tour rep I spoke with made a point of expressing “we have provided an extra car Free of charge.” This angered me for sure as the only reason they had to provide a second car short notice was because they failed to arrange for transportation for our entire group in the first place! The full refund was rejected (which again, I agree that it seemed a touch unreasonable given the expenses that had been incurred getting us to Normandy in the first place), but I’ll definitely be reaching out to customer service to discuss this situation.

via Viator

Avoid at all cost- Not as advertised

Our tour was not a tour. We were advertised and promised a full-day private tour with a driver in English to Normandy. Not only did we not have a tour guide, but our driver did not speak English leading to numerous miscommunications, This was a self-guided tour with a private NON english seeking driver. NOT a private guided tour. We did see many sites and the trip was logistically well designed. Total time was about 12 hours and our driver arrived on time, Our issue was as follows 1- There was no guide just a driver 2- the driver did not speak english 3- The driver was speeding and swerving around vehicles, and we felt unsafe on multiple occasios during our 6 hours in the car. In addition he was pulled over and ticketed by the police for reckless driving further delaying our trip. 4- We paid a premium price for a private english speaking driver/guided tour and that is not what we received Our operator when contacted was not apologetic,. After much back and forth he offered to refund us $1574 of our $2574.00. He ended up only issuing $400 which forced me to contact Viator to settle To Viator's credit, they issued the remaining $1174, for which I am very thankful. BOTTOM LINE- The Trip should have said Private Driver to Normandy . For those looking for a preimum experince I would look elsewhere Credit to Viator for standing behind their product.

Response from the operator: thank you

via Viator

Lovely day in Normandy

Our guide/driver to Normandy was a lovely, lovely person and the day was well-planned. There were three of us and we were in a car that was so comfortable for the long ride from Paris to Normandy and back. We went to several museums, all having something different to offer, and each one moving in its unique way. Our lunch in Normandy was delicious, right on Omaha Beach. The American Cemetery was the culmination of the day; it's truly such a beautiful place, peaceful and respectful. It's an incredible place to experience Our driver even took us to the best road stops! She had a long day for our tour, but she did such a beautiful job for us!

Response from the operator: Thank you for this review and all the team work hard to give you the best of France.

via Tripadvisor

Great experience

The history of Normandy was amazing. Omaha Beach, American Cemetery and numerous museums gave us a good understanding!

Response from the operator: Thank you for your review. It is important for us to get the feedback of our customers to improve our services.

via Viator