Eastern US & Canada Grand Vacation Reviews

We had a fabulous time on the Eastern US and Canada Grand Vacation - packed with history and fun things to do. The accommodation was excellent and the Tour Guide Jim Ryan and bus driver Don did a great job. He provided us with many options for things to do during the day and places to eat-Niagara Falls was my absolute highlight but also enjoyed Boston, ...read more Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, Washington. The optional extra tour with the Amish and dinner was a real delight. The free time on our own to explore was appreciated as we have been on other companies tours and found it very annoying when taken to gift shops to fill in the day. Will definitely recommend Cosmos to others - a great value for money holiday!

My booking on the East Coast USA/Canada tour was a last minute, snap decision but happy I went as I had a good time and it was a very enjoyable tour. Our Tour Director was excellent as was the coach driver - very helpful, friendly, patient and I recommend and travel with them anytime in the future. The tour itinerary and pace was quite good but of ...read more course it would have been good to spend more time on some places such as New York and Washington as so much to see and do.

The hotels were somewhat hit and miss. Overall good but some where a bit far from the city, e.g. Quebec and Washington. Skyline Hotel in New York looks very tired and is in an awful location, one night in Hell's Kitchen was too much. Lancaster hotel also dark and dismal looking inside but may not be too many to choose from in that area. Optional Tours generally overpriced for what you get and ones that included a dinner were very rushed so not enough time to enjoy the food or the venue. For me the best value was evening tour in Boston which included the harbour cruise and dinner. I would suggest that you give passengers option to do illumination tour in Washington but cut out the dinner, much better value. CN Tower, great location but felt we needed to speed eat our meal and move on so they could fill the tables with other dinners!

I travelled with Cosmos three years ago to Spain and felt that tour was much better value for money and had many more inclusions than the USA/Canada trip which apart from sightseeing in major cities/areas there were no other inclusions. I would suggest that breakfasts be included as makes it much easier for passengers particularly on the early morning starts. A welcome dinner at start of tour would give everyone a chance to meet fellow travellers and tour director and group can form a better bond from outset. I think our group would have also enjoyed a farewell dinner on the last night as this would a nice way to finish off and say goodbye instead of rushed farewells and waves as people were getting of the coach at airports or in NYC!

We had a great time on our recent Cosmos tour of Eastern US & Canada. Beautiful weather in June, excellent tour Guide, great driver and nice travel group made for a relaxing, stress free and enjoyable holiday. An improvement could be adding some group meals which would increase the social time together, this tour has no meals included.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for arranging our Cosmos tour in the USA & Canada. We have previously travelled with Trafalgar and were also extremely pleased with their service, but had some initial reservations about the quality of Cosmos as they are much more cost competitive. I am pleased to advise that our experience with Cosmos ...read more for this tour was very good. The Tour Director Darryl Jenkins was excellent. Quality of the coach above average, in fact equivalent if not better than Trafalgar. There were 49 passengers but it was extremely well organised and well timed. The coach was spotless at all times. Driver very professional.

Hotels in the main were well located and with the exception of Niagara falls of quite good standard. The optional tours were reasonably priced. We did have a few dinners where wait staff were poor but that is no reflection on Cosmos, just what seems to be the norm. Surprising when you consider that the same wait staff rely on tips for a living wage subsidy. The Tour Director was very knowledgeable and the local guides with exception of Montreal very good. Our comfort e.g. toilet breaks food beverage stops were well catered too and passengers were assisted at all times. I hope this feedback will assist you in advising other clients. Congratulations to Cosmos and their staff for a job well done. Highly recommend this tour.

This was a delightful tour commencing in NYC from 4 October. We enjoyed superb autumn colours in picturesque countryside along with the amazing historical cities of Eastern Canada and the USA, without a care in the world. We had the most delightful, organised and patient tour guide in Becky Alexander, a modern comfortable coach and a smooth, good humoured ...read more driver in Nelson. All hotels were spacious and some were 5 star. Suggestions for improvement are a welcome dinner on the first night to get passengers mixing with each other more quickly, a full day in Montreal, and hotels with refrigerators and a microwave as this is a self catering tour. This is an economical tour which more than delivers value for money.

This tour was wonderful. It was my third with Cosmos. As well as beautiful scenery including the majestic Fall colours, we enjoyed learning about the richness of the local history. Our tour guide, Becky and driver, Nelson were excellent and worked together as a team to provide everything we needed. The local guides were very knowledgeable. The hotels ...read more were mostly excellent. If they were a little out of the centre of town, Becky and Nelson would arrange for drop offs and pick ups at given times. All hotels had free wifi. My fellow travelers, 40 in all, were from Australia, England, New Zealand, US, Israel and Malaysia.

Thank you so much Michelle for your efforts on my behalf with travel arrangements for my 'Eastern US and Canada Grand Vacation' tour. I would recommend this tour to anyone. It was extremely well organised with a wonderful Tour Director (Brett Shingledecker) and driver (Roger). Although the Autumn colours were not as colourful as we had hoped (due to ...read more the longer period of warmer weather), the amount of scenic beauty, American history and fabulous local guides made it just as exciting. I truly hope to manage another Global Journey with your company soon. It all went so smoothly and fortunately the group on the tour were all lovely!

Delightful! This was our fourth Cosmos tour and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We had a small group of 31 with 20 being Aussies. We travelled approximately 3,200 kms in 14 days and so the day would start with bags out at 7am and on the bus by 8am. We would normally get to our hotel accommodation around 5pm or later. The standard of the hotels ...read more exceeded our expectations, but the location of a few were not close to the city. We used public transport or taxis to navigate our way to the city at night time. There is adequate free time to explore on your own and we did our own research in advance to make sure that we did not waste a minute of our holiday. The optional excursions on this tour are the best that we have encountered on all of our Cosmos tours and we recommend all of them. The absolute highlight of this tour was Niagara Falls and the included Hornblower boat trip was just awesome and should not be missed. Other highlights included the Thousand Islands cruise (also included), CN Tower in Toronto (optional), monuments and museums in Washington DC and old Quebec City. We were provided with seven local guides for the different cities and all the guides were locals and knew their city very well. Thank you Cosmos, once again, for such a well organised tour.

Great tour. Covered lots of places. Lots of free time. Great value for money. The only down side was that a number of the hotels were located out of town.

We loved the trip overall. Just some of the optional extras were not that good, as the food and service was sometimes bad and very tight fit at the tables on occasions. We will be booking again, as overall it was value for money.

Tour certainly met our expectations, we enjoyed the 2 night stays. Long drives on first couple of days then good pace between cities, we had lots of free time and had fun with fellow travellers. Highlights for us were history of Canada cities, Niagara Falls, Amish dinner & Washington. We stayed in New York for 4 days before & after the tour which ...read more was very enjoyable.

I really enjoyed this tour. Our tour guide, Daryl, was really knowledgeable and very friendly and helpful. Our tour coach was fantastic. There was free wifi on the coach when we were in the US and we could charge our devices. Most of the accommodation was really good. There were a couple which weren't in the middle of town but were close to public transport ...read more to get into town and all provided free wifi. The highlight of the trip for me was definitely Niagara Falls. That was really neat to see and experience. I took the optional excursion of the helicopter ride over the falls and that was well worth it. Otherwise, the included boat ride right up to the falls was really good too. No meals are included in the tour so the only suggestion I'd make is to include meals at the beginning and end of the tour so the group can get a chance to bond. Overall, I thought it was a great itinerary and a part of me wishes the trip was longer! Great value for money and I had a great experience, both with the tour and with Global Journeys. Georgie was great answering all my questions and getting everything sorted and booked. Thank you!

We enjoyed the Eastern USA and Canada tour and would recomend it to anyone. There were lots of extras included such as the local guides and entry to a few things, accomodation was overall good and could not praise our tour guide enough - he made everything so easy. We are looking forward to doing another tour soon.

First trip with Cosmos. We are impressed with the organization, competence, friendliness, and knowledge of the staff. For our next destination we will definitely look at Global Journeys first.

Firstly, we enjoyed our experience with Global Journeys. It was our first experience of booking a holiday totally online and you made the process easy for us. You were responsive to our additional requests and provided timely reminders when payments etc., were due. We shall certainly use your services on future occasions. Thank you. Our recent tour ...read more was our fourth with Cosmos. All have been great tours, however, we both believe this one eclipsed the previous tours. We believe the main reasons for this were - It was a large coach tour of 48 persons, consisting of 42 Aussies, 2 Kiwis, and 4 Singaporean. All got on well together and, as you can imagine, we Aussies know how to enjoy ourselves, so it set the tone for the tour. Our Tour Director remarked at the end of the tour it was probably the best tour he had taken in his many years in the business. It was a really well thought out journey, which concentrated on North American history, involving the The construction of the St Lawrence Seaway and the 1000 Islands area; the Colonial wars of Independence between the US and England; the wars involving Canada, England and France; and the history of William Penn in offering sanctuary to the religiously persecuted groups, in Europe, e.g., the Amish People, whom we learned about during our visit to Lancaster. It also included a visit to Washington DC and its many points of interest and, last but not least, our visit to Niagara and its falls which are truly magnificent. Our Tour Director, really knew his stuff, providing historical and other information relevant to the tour. He also provided timely information on our stopovers and things to do in our spare time. We were never short of things to do and see. The Local Guides were also very interesting and knowledgeable in their topics. The optional extras offered added to and enhanced the tour further. Finally, all the accommodation was comfortable and of a good standard. The coach was very new, comfortable and well appointed. It also had WiFi which many of us utilised and appreciated. The driver was excellent, very experienced, friendly, and he greatly added to the pleasure of the tour.

Overall the Tour and the Tour Guide were wonderful. One aspect of the Tour that was disappointing was the Amish experience. The hotel we stayed at was appalling and I do not think it would meet hygiene standards. There were spiders and creatures in both the rooms that were shown to me. I have the visual evidence. The Amish dinner and visit to the centre ...read more were all very weak. My suggestion is to stay in another small town to break the journey between Niagra Falls and Washington.

This is a well established tour for Cosmos and is clearly popular - the bus was virtually full with 50 people. I was a little disappointed with the pace at the beginning of the trip - after a full day in Boston we drove to Quebec in Canada in one hit (with three breaks) - a very long day indeed. We saw very little of the East Coast New Hampshire or ...read more Vermont apart from the highway. It was also somewhat disappointing that the Fall was late this year and the trees were not yet coloured. However, Canada was lovely and the way south through Niagara Falls and Pennsylvania lived up to expectation. The half day in Lancaster County meeting the Amish people was fascinating and made up for the fact that, when we got to Washington, it was closed! (Due to a Government shut down.) The Tour Director, Brett, was knowledgeable and good tempered, took everything in his stride and did his best to minimise the problems in Washington (he managed to get us within sight of most monuments, if not inside). Accommodation was generally good and once or twice brilliant! This tour is great as a taster for Canada and Pennsylvania, but if you are hoping to catch the Fall colours on the east coast, I would recommend you take a New England only trip.

The tour was excellent. Tour director & bus driver were fantastic. I recommend that you do the extra activities that they suggest, it's worth it. Accommodation is reasonable for the price but some hotels are a little dated & most are not centrally located but the bus generally takes you to the centre & picks you up. The stop in Philadelphia was really ...read more too short to be useful. An extra day in Montreal would have been nice perhaps sacrificing the Amish experience (personal choice really). Thousand Island tour was totally unexpected & really beautiful. Niagra helicopter ride was fantastic so was the CN Tower dinner in Toronto. I'd recommend it to anyone thinking about such a tour.

There was a good balance of included tours, free time and optional tour experiences. The guide (Larry Schwartz) initially appeared tense. However, he proved to be very knowledgeable and extremely well organised. He gauged the interests of the group very well and catered for this. Local tour guides were generally excellent, apart from Al in Boston. The ...read more group found him very difficult to understand. The hotel accommodation was very good, except for Boston (the Brookline Hotel) where the room was very cramped and both the air conditioner and the indoor pool pump were noisy, making it difficult to sleep. Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed the experience and have recommended it to our friends. We would have no hesitation in booking another Cosmos trip.

Very well organised and punctual arrival and departures each day. The pace was constant, without being too hectic. There was sufficient free time. It could not have been better.