Review of 1 Day Mutianyu Great Wall No Shopping Tour by Paul

We had a difficult time contacting the company to verify our trip for the following morning - our email was intermittent, and our cell phone was not cooperating - we did EVENTUALLY receive an email confirmation - the evening AFTER our tour! We were assured that our tour guide would speak English - however, there was no comment that the bus driver, trying to pick us up for the tour, could speak any English. Fortunately, he had our name on a piece of paper and we were able to communicate that indeed, we were the ones listed on his paper. We were informed when we booked the tour that the driver would show up between 6:30 and 7:50 a.m. at our hotel. We still didn't know if the driver was going to actually pick us up, so we made ourselves available by 6:30 a.m. and we had given up hope at 7:55 a.m. and we were preparing to walk out the door and find something else to do, when the driver did finally show up. We were then driven across town to a bigger bus, loaded to capacity, and finally containing our English-speaking guide. The traffic was horrible, due to a Chinese holiday celebrating their ancestors. Because of our late pickup, and this solid traffic jam all the way to the Great Wall, we got there very late and had little time to walk the wall. We were even later as our guide was having some difficulties handing out our admission passes to the Wall, and to the Cable Car transport. This took another hour, I think. The Wall itself was impressive and wonderful, as expected! Our travel back to the hotels was horrible. We were informed that again there were traffic jams downtown, and the bus sat and waited for a bunch of the travelers to get tired of waiting, so they walked to train stations or hailed cabs. Some of us who had further to travel, stayed with the bus so they would take us back to were we were supposed to be dropped off. Our driver had a terrible time finding the location of the last couple of hotels, so the last group gave up and hailed taxis, or tried walking to their hotels. We stuck it out as it was now well after sunset, dark, and we had no idea of how to return to our hotel. The driver eventually called for directions a couple of times but was still crawling along, trying to see street signs. Oh, did I mention that the English-speaking tour guide had gotten off the bus an hour and a half ago, leaving us with no means of communication with the driver? I kept showing him the hotel's address, written in Chinese, to verify that we were still heading in the right direction. He would nod, but I was worried right up until we finally found our hotel at 9 p.m. Did I also mention that we were supposed to be back at our hotel by 6 or 7 p.m.? Oh yes, this was the "Non-shopping tour," but we still had to run through the shopping area, because they wouldn't let the bus go straight through, so this took another 30 minutes. We ended up spending less than an hour and a half at the Great Wall.