PARISCityVISION

Professional, efficient Paris and Versailles attractions tours. We booked a couple of tours so I will break them apart for the review below.
Tickets: Buy onsite or bring your printed voucher to 2 Rue des Pyramides. You will need to wait in a line to convert the voucher to a ticket or buy tickets. It does move, but allow enough time before your tour for the conversion process. After obtaining the printed ticket you will stand by a numbered sign where your guide will pick you up for your tour that day. TIP: While waiting, there is a small café across the street where you can use the bathroom if you buy at least one item.
Tour Location: It is an easy metro ride exiting at Tuilieres M (Line 1). You will come out at the park and walk half a block to the Paris City Visions tour office. Palais Royal (line 1 & 4) and Pyramides (line 7 & 14) are also close metro stations. Taxis drop off there as well.
Tour of City/​Eiffel Tower with a Baeaux Parisiens River Cruise:
City Tour — We met at the Paris City Visions office, converted our voucher and boarded our tour bus. It is a closed bus which is excellent since Paris was having a heat wave at the time. The closed bus also protects you from rain. We had a tour of the major Paris landmarks and were dropped off at the Eiffel Tower.
Eiffel Tower — Our Tour Guide provided us with our Eiffel Tower tickets and helped us take the elevator to the viewing landing which ended the tour. The city views were spectacular and there is a gift shop at the viewing level if you like. We chose to pay an additional fee to go to the highest level which was a fun experience, but I personally found the views to be about the same and similar to the Chrysler building is glassed-​in so a bit obstructed. We decided to walk the stairs down for fun and came to a mid level platform that had a large deck and bar. It was nice to relax there in the comfy chairs and there was a glass floor section so you could ‘stand on air” and look straight down. We then walked that last stairs down to the ground level and over toward the river docks for our cruise.
Bateaux Parisiens River Cruise — Go straight to the riverside ticket area on the docks and confirm your cruise time. Depending on crowds there could be a bit of a wait. If you have a time gap it is pretty to walk along the river walk and there are food and drink vendors as well as restrooms. As your cruise time approaches go get in line to board. The order in line determines your order boarding and therefore seat selection. Go straight through and up the stairs to the top deck as it has the best views and a nice breeze on a sunny day. The river cruise is a great way to see the Seine bridges and many landmarks like Notre Dame. It is beautiful to take your cruise at sunset or even at night and see the city lights. The cruise only takes about an hour and is definitely worth doing!
Transportation Tip from Eiffel Tower and River Boat Docks: The Metro stop Pont del l’Alma is close by.
Versailles Tour: Versailles Palace is a beautiful side trip well worth visiting if you are in Paris! We met at the Paris City Visions office, converted our voucher and boarded our tour bus. It is a closed bus as you leave the city via interstate and drive out to Versailles. It took 30 minutes — 1 hour to drive. Upon arriving the tour group waits together at the tour group entrance and goes in with 2 or 3 groups at a time. Be prepared to be patient as there is a wait and the lines move slowly. However, it is much faster than trying to enter without being part of a group. Once inside, you will go through security and receive an audio set for a self-​paced tour through the palace. The palace itself is gorgeous and very luxurious. After walking through the rooms you can tour the gardens. There is a separate garden fee — some tours include it and some do not so inquire when buying. Do note that there are signs indicating that some days there is a fountain show. On those days you have to buy a separate ticket. The funny thing is the fountain show just means they turn the fountains on for those days/​periods of time. Very funny! Anyway the fountains themselves are pretty even without water and the gardens are interesting and fun to walk. They are expansive so wear good walking shoes! The tour has a time limit so be aware of what time you have available and when/​where to return to the parked bus. You are returned to the main Paris City Visions office at the end of the visit.
Paris City Visions provided excellent, professional tours for all of those we purchased and I would use them again!

On July, 21^st my ten-​year-​old daughter and I embarked on a mother/​daughter tour, and what we were anticipating to be the highlight of our ten day trip. We chose a Daytrip by Minivan: Paris Sightseeing Eiffel Tower Lunch and Versailles for a cost of 430 Euro.
Our driver, Max, had to be awoken from his nap across the van seats when we finished walking through Montmartre, but that was a nonissue.
However, when we arrived at the Eiffel Tower at 12:30 for our reserved lunch, our driver was adamant that we met him at Dock #5 by 1:45. He insisted that we allow minimum of 25 minutes to ride the elevator down and cross the street to the river. We didn’t dally during our lunch. At 1:15 we exited the restaurant, and not knowing when we would return to Paris, I was heartbroken to have to deny my daughter the ability to experience the Eiffel Tower from the second floor. We left without getting the chance, as I was too afraid of our driver’s promise to leave at 1:45. Sadly, we arrived at Dock #5 at 1:45, it was sunny outside with temperatures approaching the nineties. We waited.
By 2:00, we stood by the curb, sweaty and sunburned, watching all the other tour vans leave the premise.
By 2:10, my Eiffel Tower lunch transformed into a hard knot. I felt nauseous and frantic. We had been abandoned. I glanced down at my daughter feeling helpless, what was I supposed to do from there? She was miserable and I felt we were unsafe on the docks after everyone left.
At 2:25 the van pulled into the empty parking lot. It was 40 minutes past our meeting time, my daughter and I dripping in sweat, and our driver had the additional customers with him. Despite paying 430 Euro for this abandoned adventure, the driver sought more money at our expense.
We arrived at Versailles, and when it came time to enter the palace our situation became scary. The company must operate its «reduced line» feature by bribing. The driver escorted our group to a guard monitoring the line, the guard nodded his head and opened the rope for us to push into the line. The driver and guard vanished, but our presence was instantly detected by those who had been waiting. They line-​goers screamed, pointed and shoved us. I had a child to protect and the experience was frightening. We tried to explain that it was part of our tour, the premium paid for a waiting allowance, but they continued to shout at us.
This was a memorable tour — for all the wrong reasons.

THEY NEVER SHOWED UP! I made a reservation for my parents for a Versailles trip and they waited for 1.5 hrs outside for the pickup and no one called or showed up, even after a confirmation email was sent 4 hrs prior. Customer service is completely useless. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!

Hotel arranged this tour to versailles. Picked us up 20 minutes late with no explanation or apology. Our guide, Habib was native Frenchman whose French accent made almost everything he said unintelligible. Not very personable either.

We paid for a guided tour of Versailles … there may have been a misunderstanding on our part as to the length of the tour, and I will give them the benefit of the doubt there. Given that, here was the remainder of our experience:
We were NOT told that the tour buses were numbered, and just to wait out front. Due to our diligent investigation, we finally figured out we were standing in an incorrect line and moved once we noticed someone removed the magnetic number and placed it near a different bus. All loaded, we then waited about 25 minutes for some unknown reason before taking off. Perhaps one of the tour guides were late? Once arriving there we were given 10 minutes to walk the gardens before the inside tour was to begin. We were told to wait in section a for our tour guide and group that was to be in English.
We took a moment to gaze out at the Gardens and returned in plenty of time, only to find that our group was in section C and leaving to enter early.
Our tour guide spoke very broken English, and was a low talker, Seinfeld fans will understand. She only gave the most inane information and seemed to only want to move from spot to spot when someone else’s tour was moving in order to cluster us all up for some reason. She could see no one was happy and kept telling us don’t worry the tour would be over soon.
She gave us another 15 minutes after the indoor tour to either use the facilities prior to boarding the bus or to pop out and try to see the gardens. This was simply ridiculous given the best outdoor space.
Do yourself a huge favor and just get a non-​guided tour ticket. Being with a tour group allows you to bypass the huge security line and file through one set up just for tour groups. This will save you approximately an hour. My advice is to then skip the bus back and just take the metro. Even with the museum pass, you still have to go through the long security line so I still would go with some tour company, but they’re definitely wasn’t enough time to see anything.
She also chastised a couple sitting next to us, because they returned the audio equipment directly to the facility rather than to her. Apparently they didn’t understand or hear her instructions. From one small business owner to another, I did buys them to have some instructions written in English to give their clients, it would save them a lot of trouble
Lastly, our tour guide, who is a representative for her company, didn’t seem to be very concerned about combing her hair that morning. Everybody has a bad day, but everything just seemed cumulative with this company.

UGH! if I could give them ZERO STARS I WOULD
AVOID AT ALL COST !!!
On June 29^th, 2015 I took a one day trip to London
on the Eurostar.
The total for 2 tickets roundtrip was approx. $ 560
in a nutshell basically my sister and I were
stranded in London due to riots in the north
of France that compromised the train tracks.
All Eurostar trains were cancelled that night
I stood in line for over 3 hours waiting to
speak to a Eurostar rep and be able to get
on the next available train back to Paris the following
morning.
Because of the saturation and
various cancelled trains and rescheduling
the closest they got me was to Disney Paris
and I had to take the Metro back to my Hotel.
IT WAS ALL A MESS
Mind you we still had a full 8 days left
in Paris full of plans and tours that were paid for
anyways back to London.
All the hotels in London were booked
and the ones with availability were severely overpriced.
My sister and I ended up spending the night at the train station
without any sleep just sitting and waiting for over 8 hours.
I was told by a Eurostar rep
to email Eurostar and start a claim
Eurostar told me it had to be through PARIS CITY VISION
who was the 3^rd party who charged my card.
It has now been over a month and
they promised a 80 to 90% refund.
I have been in talks with my bank and started
a claim and Paris City Vision accepted to refund LESS
THAN THE 80 to 90% so its going to be another
month before I get my money back
JUST DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND LOOK
FOR ANOTHER COMPANY !!!

Just awful!!! We booked three separate tours on three separate days and every single one was a disaster.
1– Versailles. Said we weren’t in the system despite having a confirmation. While there, we were rushed through the palace. You’re better off going on your own!
2 — Louvre tour with audio guide. They charged me for the kids even though Louvre staff told us there was no charge for kids. Audio was pathetic. Not complete and follows no reasonable sequence while inside the museum. Better off going early on your own and using the museums audio tour
3– Paris City Tour. They emailed me while I had already arrived in Paris (after having a confirmation sent 3 weeks prior) to saying the trip was overbooked and offered us another date. After we said that wasn’t an option for us, they miraculously got a cancellation. When we arrived, they put us on the no lunch tour despite having paid for a lunch. Not professional, rushed and way over priced.
We booked everything through Expedia and they tried to blame them for everything. That’s not professional. I’ve been using Expedia for over 6 years without a single incident. While in line, we heard from several others with similar stories. The staff were laughing it off as a common occurrence.
I’m so not impressed Paris City Vision.

My mom and I did the Giverny and Versailles tour and Carine was our guide and she was Amazing!!! Definitely made our entire Paris trip! She was great at explaining the history and engaging the other people on the tour. The lunch at Le Moulin Fourges was delightful as well! Great food and service and beautiful scenery. Definitely recommend this tour especially with Carine!

I booked, online, a bus trip and guided English language afternoon tour of Monet’s home in Giverny. We checked in at the appointed time at their office and received a boarding pass. The bus was a double decker. It was modern and comfortable with air conditioning. The bus had three guides and one driver and was nearly at capacity. I had assumed that the passengers would be spoken to in English, but the different guides represented three different languages. They gave each passenger a headset to wear to hear their guide. However, they discovered that one transmitter was broken. So, they gave the narration over the bus intercom in English, Portuguese and Spanish. This was hardly relaxing — having to listen to the talked repeated in each language. The English speaking guide was a woman with a very heavy French accent, which was somewhat difficult to follow. When we arrived, the largest group, the English speakers, followed the French woman. She gave instructions on when to return to the bus, but no guided tour, and we walked around with the non-​functional headphones around our necks. The bus ride and the location were lovey, but I feel that we didn’t get the English language tour we were promised. Somebody should have checked the equipment prior to departure.

We bought a combined Paris city tour, skip-​the-​line Eiffel tower, and cruise. For this combo, you show up at the ParisCityVision office on 2 Rue Pyramides to exchange your emailed, printed receipt for a ticket which gets you on a double decker bus. Ive never been on a tour bus so this was all new to us.
So you show up at the office and their is a horrible line to redeem web ticket for actual tickets. The office is hot because ventilation is poor and there are many people. The staff are rushed trying to process all these people and I saw one pair of women arguing over who was next in line.
The bus is a totally enclosed type (not like the open air double deckers). We choose the lower level of the bus thinking it might be cooler. It was very well air conditioned which was great but you strain to see the sights. Little earphones plugin to the seat for audio narrative. While you cover a lot of ground, it is marginally worthwhile at best. I would probably rather see less on foot.
They drop you at the Eiffel tower where a guide marches you to an entrance for tour groups. This is the ‘skip the line’ part. What they dont tell you is that while you are skipping the pay-​for-​your-​ticket line, you still have the –go-​up-​on-​the-​elevator line. And that is 20+ min. Your guide is now gone and you are on your own. Just before that, we were given tickets for the cruise and told we could use it anytime for the next 2 days and were told where to go to meet the cruise boat.
I did the cruise and while the cattle car process to board is a bit painful, the cruise itself is fun. There are a lot of people but the boat is very large so you are not squished and it seemed everyone that wanted a seat got one.
Overall, this is a inexpensive way to get a very superficial view of Paris. For some that may be what they want. But the ticket exchange deal kinda sucks. And overall, I would rather pay more for a private guide and do a walk/​metro/​cab tour.

Fabulous tour company! My fiancé and I booked a guided tour of the Champagne Region from Paris with this tour company. They were great! Our guide, Ricardo, was friendly, knowledgable and professional. He spoke very good English as well. We toured a smaller producer (Dauby) as well as a large producer (GH Mumm) in addition to a nice lunch. It was perfect. I highly recommend this tour company.

Best place for tours! very helpful, very resourceful, able to answer any questions we had. all their tour guides spoke several languages, not just English and French, which was amazing. they had no much to offer and at a very reasonable price. the only thing I did not like so much was the fact they you had to wait in big line to check in for your tours, but when I asked why they always had so many lines, the woman politely answered and said that they had another location about a 2 min walk up the street but it was currently under construction to get ready for the summer.

They messed up my booking, and the young blond girl was pounding the table and yelled at me ‚…, the tour was terrible, and the guide were very rude and inconsiderate.

We did a wonderful tour of Montmatre during our stay in Paris. We went there in a private van and the guide was really good and nice. He was helpful and gave us some good tips where we can ate good food out of the tourists spots. Highly recommanded

Do not recommend. We booked the champagne day trip and Moulin Rouge tickets thru Paris City Vision but could have had similar experiences without using these bookings.
The tours leave on time, promptly.
The champagne region was an experience. Amazing views of French countryside. The 8AM — 6PM tour only includes 2 champagneries and 2 glasses of wine. At each tour each guest receives 1 small glass of champagne — hardly a tasting. For the price, it’s a bit of a rip-​off considering you only get the ride, 2 glasses of champagne, and have to pay for your own lunch.
The bus tour before the Moulin Rouge — also a rip off. Spend the $ on better Moulin Rouge tickets and skip the bus tour.
Nearly every tour the company offered is available elsewhere for 5 – 10 euro cheaper.

We booked the 5 hour tour of Versailles with this company with the fountain tour included (87 euro each for adults). The person who sold us the ticket did not tell us that we needed to convert our voucher to a boarding pass, so although we were at the appointed spot an hour in advance, we found out this new information very late and ended up at the end of the boarding line.
The tour guide was fine but not spectacular. She seemed to ramble a bit. The palace was so crowded that day – not their fault of course – that it was hard to enjoy the trip. The bus departed on time and returned on time. The seats were comfortable.
Overall, considering that everything is taken care of and we had no ticket lines to stand in at Versailles I would say that the trip was worth the money.

This was the worst tour I have ever been on. The guide was rude & unorganized. All employees seemed confused unable to communicate and give clear direction. I wish I had read the other awful reviews before choosing this company. We would have been much better off visiting these places on our own. Stay AWAY! Go with Viator instead, much better.(*The tour was not a full day tour as listed on the website, but 2 half day tours.)

Unexplainable how you can purchase two tickets for 1 tour and be sold two tickets for completely different bus tours. Beware — even though the tickets look the same you may get separated when the driver tells you that you were sold the wrong ticket. We fought them and got our money back.

We went on two day tours with this company out of Paris. The Versailles tour was very good. Our guide was knowledgeable and answered questions and was very pleasant. We could have used more time but that was hardly his fault, two people didn’t bother to show up.
The trip to Normandy’s Landing Beaches was a bit of a mixed bag. The locations were interesting and informative, however the timing was not allocated correctly. Also, we learned nothing new and found our guide to be misinformed on several topics. (I say this with a BA in European History.) We were not sure if the misinformation was due to personal belief or cultural norms, but we were not impressed with his presentation.
It would also have been nice to have been provided an accurate timetable prior to leaving. We missed dinner reservations due to this.
We also did their green bus on/​off tour of the city. It was ok the first day, minus the headphones not working. The second day it took forever to get anywhere and this was not due to traffic, the driver decided to wait around at every stop for about ten minutes. (Split two ways taxi transport was faster, cheaper and more time efficient)

Our travel agent in New York (Liberty Travel) worked in conjunction with Cityrama for three guided tours: château, Versailles, and Paris by night. The bus is comfortable and equipped with headphones for a self-​tour explore in multi-​languages.
Service is efficient and courteous despite my former love and I’s country of origin.