2 AM Wakeups, Cramped Vans, and Ghosted by Support: My Honest Wingbuddy Review

If you read about our trip to France, you already know my opinion on the hotels selected by Wingbuddy. These accommodations really set the tone for a more frustrating and less relaxing trip than we had imagined upon booking after reading Wingbuddy's marketing materials for their Paris & the French Riviera package.

Ultimately, the hotel choice is reason enough that I will never travel with Wingbuddy again. It's disappointing because I really don't want to have to badmouth a Canadian company, but it would feel disingenuous to pretend everything went tickety-boo. In reality, lots went wrong with the logistics Wingbuddy was meant to handle. We didn't get what we paid for.

The Illusion Vs. the Reality

First, when you look at their ads, they of course use the lowest starting price for the trip. The trip says 12 days, but since two of those are traveling, you're really only getting 10 days in the location you choose.

$4,298 sounds like a steal of a deal for flights and hotels with breakfast, but in reality our cost was actually $6,288 per person, which is almost $5000 more off the bat for a two person travel party.

NOTE: Apparently Wingbuddy's single supplement is also exorbitant, so it isn't really this cost per person ever. They're always going to charge more than they advertise.

But still, the ad was appealing and I clicked through to read the itinerary details. They present their packages with a day by day overview that captures itinerary featuring buzz words like "breathtaking scenery", "luxury and elegance", and "after unwinding at one of the numerous beaches". This is wishful thinking in retrospect, but the marketing really did give me the illusion that adapting to Paris and Nice would be smooth.

They say " Day 2: Paris

Arrival at the airport in Paris. You will be greeted by our local representatives and transferred to your hotel. The rest of the day is free to discover Paris, the City of lights, fine food, iconic monuments, and shopping galore. Overnight in Paris."

In reality, there was no one there to greet us. And we were dropped off in a residential district that barely felt like Paris at all. There weren't monuments or shopping and the nearby restaurants didn't have French cuisine.

Their Day 5 Itinerary says " Take advantage of your last moments in Paris before the transfer to the airport for your flight to Nice", but the reality was that our airport transfer happened at 3:15 am. Nothing was open to enjoy in Paris at all.

Again we were promised to be greeted by local representatives for an airport transfer from Nice, but no one was waiting for us when we arrived.

Finally, their Day 12 itinerary says "Last breakfast at the hotel before the transfer to the airport for your flight home" . This outright didn't happen because we had a 4am transfer to the airport.

Overall, the package description presents a smooth plan, which could never be achieved with the self-guided reality. The reality of our Wingbuddy trip was that we had ungodly, early transfers between each destination, excursions that were short and unguided in a cramped vans, and disappointing support when things went wrong. There were several broken promises, and we learned that Wingbuddy is not a high-end tour operator; rather they are a logistical middleman that fumbles the basics.

Air Transit-Included Equalled the Least Desirable Flights

Every single flight they booked us was a brutal, crack of dawn departure. What could have been a good thing ended up being a curse. Our flight times led to wake up times between 2:00am to 4:00am on every leg of the journey including our flight home.

It's awful to try navigating an airport before any staff have arrived. Even in Paris, we should have had a domestic flight and really only needed to be at the airport an hour an a half before the flight. Instead, we waited at a shop called Paul for Air France staff to arrive. Then got yelled at for sitting there because they weren't open yet.

Charles De Gaulle (CDG) is a nightmare for comfort before 5:00am in the terminal we were waiting in. The few chairs they had were already full and we had to wait almost 2 hours to check-in. Though there were some benefits to being first in line to check-in, our Paris to Nice transfer time was completely unnecessary.

The problem with this all is that we were supposed to be on vacation. It took serious labour and emotional energy just to survive transit on this trip. When you have to wake up at 2:00 in the morning, you don't get much sleep, then you're wasting most of your vacation energy trying to navigate an airport before it's open.

Seamless Transfers was a Broken Promise

Wingbuddy's marketing materials present it like you'll be greeted by your transfer and whisked away to your hotel. But at both airports we arrived at in France, there was no one waiting with a sign with our name on it.

At Paris, I had a voucher for the transfer and so I knew it was supposed to be there. That piece of paper gave us a number to call and, luckily, we managed to get assistance from one of the other drivers waiting for arrivals. He called and we found out that our driver was running late, so we waited around 15 minutes for him to arrive after we'd entered the arrivals terminal.

In Nice, it was a different story. I had remembered reading about the transfer, but again no one was waiting for us. To me, this didn't qualify as an emergency, so I didn't call the Wingbuddy support line they'd given us. I just figured I'd misremembered the transfer promise and instead we went out an found a taxi ourselves.

It was 9:00am and we were hungry. We weren't going to wait around trying to locate a driver again. There wouldn't have been anyone to help us anyway, because we had no contact information for Nice.

Ghosted Overseas: The "Emergency" Lie

It wouldn't have mattered if I'd called the emergency line anyway. The day we were leaving Nice, our transfer was late so I called the number. I got a message saying I was calling out of business hours. Therefore, Wingbuddy doesn't have the 24/7 Support it requires to run a global travel company.

We were left entirely on our own in a foreign country. Not to mention, when I did call, we had to make it to the airport to check in for a 6:40am flight. Leaving at 4:00am was already cutting it close and if we'd had to find our own ride, we might have been late.

Transparently Cost-dependent Hotel Choices

A tour company’s hotel choices matter. Wingbuddy didn’t just book beds. They shaped the trip. The hotel locations affected how much time we lost, how often we needed taxis, how tired we got, and how easy the days felt.

While their choices were a cost-saving move they need to make to be profitable, the reality is that this totally landed on us as an inconvenience. You go with a company like this to eliminate some of the stress of choosing hotels and location. There marketing materials present the situation like there will be lots to explore right out your hotel door, but it was basically like us doing it ourselves and choosing the cheapest hotels regardless of location. Ultimately, that would have been a very similar experience to what we got.

Cramped Vans and Motion Sickness

When we bought the trip, they made it seem like there was high demand and spots were limited. We were imagining buses to destinations like Cannes and Monaco. Buses that would be full of fellow travelers to meet. The reality is that there was only enough demand to fill small vans. Nice Mercedes vans, but still small and close quarters for 8 strangers to be packed into.

On our first trip to Cannes and Antibes, Dean and I jumped into the back of the van because we were the youngest travelers of the group. There were three seats in each row total, so ultimately we'd have to sit next to someone we didn't know.

This would have been fine if the air-conditioning was working, but it wasn't. Dean experienced motion sickness for the first time in his life as the van navigated the winding coastline. We were promised in the marketing materials to get to admire the stunning coast, but ultimately, we didn't get to see much from the back of a cramped van.

Lazy Itinerary Design

The trip to Cannes and Antibes was the worst. We were basically dropped off in locations that were close to something cool, but sent off to explore on our own. In Cannes, Dean and I went ocean swimming from the beach, then walked down to the Palais des Festivals. Then we went to Sephora and he bought me a birthday present. We made the best of Cannes, but by the time we got to Antibes, the van had unsettled Dean's stomach. i didn't know what to do or see there, so I wandered the marina for a bit, then we sat on a fountain in the old town and waited for the free time to elapse so we could go back to Nice.

Ultimately, dropping us off for an hour and expecting us to see it all was insulting to intentional travel. I didn't know I'd have to do in-depth research on these locations to get anything out of them. Luckily, Eze and Monaco was a bit better. We ditched the Fragonard portion of the Eze tour and climbed the hilltop ourselves to get more time in the village. Then when we were taken to Monaco, our guide walked us through the landmarks, drove us on the F1 Circuit, and dropped us off strategically. Still, it wasn't enough to redeem the van transport for the third day and we ditched the tour entirely missing St. Tropez.

No Dress Code Warnings

When we got to the Monte Carlo Casino, we hadn't been forewarned about their dress code. Men are not allowed to enter with hats and flip-flops. No open-toed shoes for men. Given that Dean couldn't come play with me, I didn't want to enter. However, playing roulette in this casino had been on my bucket-list.

Ultimately, Wingbuddy is to blame for this missed opportunity. There was nothing in their marketing materials or even the tour package documents that they sent to warn us about dress code packing and dressing for our excursions.

Other Guided Tours in Paris and the South of France

Despite how much I disliked the early mornings our Globus tour of Italy required from us, I'd probably go with a company like this over Wingbuddy. ever again They ultimately did handle logistics for us and we saw a lot more in Italy than we saw on our tour of France.