<p>Hi,</p>
<p>Just wondering if anyone has had any experience with this company? If so I would love to hear about it. Thanks so much!</p>
<p>D went to Italy last summer with Explorica. TONS of travel nightmares that parents had to handle by phone over the entire two week tour. Explorica was uncooperative. 29 girls spent the entire tour with NO LUGGAGE. Buses to one location broke down. While Explorica wasn't responsible for a refueling delay in London that resulted in the entire tour missing the connecting flight to Rome, they WERE too cheap to send transportation to each of the groups (the tour had been split up into three groups, as they had to be slotted onto the next available flight,) and D spent something like 12 hours in Heathrow. Arrived at Rome hotel at 2AM & then had to rise at 6AM to try to fit in some of the previous day's scheduled events. While dealing with jetlag. The school teacher running the trip had difficulty getting Explorica to honor the promise of certain hotels. Personally, I would not use them again. The tour guides were excellent, though. Realizing how privileged she was to tour Italy as a 16 year old kept D from complaining (she knew I wouldn't hear of it!) but as the one paying the bill, I feel Explorica was not a good value at all.</p>
<p>Yikes! Sorry for your experience and thanks for posting.</p>
<p>In general, I think you could arrange your own "tour" for less $$ & fewer hassles. But the lure of having so many great friends to travel with & an expereinced language teacher/world traveler running the show was why we gave D the chance to go. I assumed that Explorica would have made travel problems more bearable, because of their years of experience. I really feel they were made some bad decisions based on their profit margin. Despite the problems, D has an amazing adventure.</p>
<p>yes, that was why I looked at them - the opportunity to travel with other teens, to take advantage of their expertise, etc. I don't know how I could arrange a tour on my own - unless we were going as a family. She is interested in going to Greece and I don't see any other companies offering that alternative - except for Adventure Teen Travel, where the student travels alone to Greece and then meets up with the group - not wild about that idea at all.</p>