DANIEL GOODWIN

Review of Kayak Chicago

I couldn't have been more excited to do the July 4...

I couldn't have been more excited to do the July 4th fireworks tour, and am shocked be saying that it was a spectacularly horrendous experience. Do not use this company - they are the furthest from the destination, and that added distance is through the ugliest polluted area of the river, it extend the time with no bathroom possibility, no water possibility, and total 4 hours of struggling through merky nasty sewage stench water with floating bottles and scuzzy bubbles that won't pop. There are other much closer tour companies we saw, others with tour guides with bull horns you can hear (unlike ours who you could not hear), others with nicer newer kayaks, and others that don't take on 80 or more kayaks and badger them the whole time. We were clustered so closely together that we were constantly being rammed into by others in our group or splashing that nasty water onto each other with our oars. My boat and others had no safety light packets placed on them. Then the best part - one kayaker rammed into my boat right near Michigan avenue as we all were ordered to be packed in like sardines and a huge bunch of waves came from a speeding boat and that sent my boat all the way over and me swimming in the river. In emergency panic mode, I wound up having to right my boat myself, got in it, it was full and fell over again, managed to get back in, I fell out again, then I had to get my boat to a dock, lift it onto the dock myself to try and get all the water I could out of it, and then paddle it back about 1/4 full of water after all that struggling with zero other options to get back to the starting point. I was drenched head to toe in algae stinking sewage, exhausted, alone from my group. My group, who was ordered to move on while I was still in the water, and prevented from helping me. A totally completely horrible experience and I absolutely attribute that to this company.