Auschwitz Birkenau Tour with Pickup and Lunch

A very interesting visit but the guide could have made more comments. His French was very good. Unfortunately the schedule of the visit changed the day before, 12:40 instead of 10am so we wasted time. Lots of traffic so 2 hours to get there.

The day before departure change of schedule at the pick-up place at 10 am at the hotel meeting at a bus stop at 2:15 pm not cool when planned another booking in the evening because of the return trip to Krakow at 9:30 pm and dropped off not at the departure point but much further Visit too fast barely time to go to the bathroom

This is an terrible tour company. They changed my tour start time from 10am to 5.40am which we could not make because we were staying a long way out from the pickup point. I knew they could change the time but when I called them to explain our problem getting there for that time the were not just uninterested but the person I was communicating with was so rude and was in need of customer relations training. Avoid!!

16 hours before the scheduled tour, it was simply cancelled. There appeared to be no entrance tickets for Auschwitz, while we had booked them 6 weeks in advance. We could go to the salt mine, but that was NOT the reason for our visit to Poland!!!! Really outrageous.

Auschwitz was an incredible thing to do. My review focuses on the operators taking us to and from Auschwitz itself. I booked for 10am with a lunch, knowing it would be a long day. We were not picked up till 11:15 and did not get to Auschwitz until 1:30pm. The drive there entailed with myself, 26 weeks pregnant, squashed onto the back row of a minibus unable to even straighten my shoulders out for an hour and a half. We then witness the driver texting one handed and two handed throughtout the whole journey whilst driving us there. This caused him to swerve on multiple occassions. Photographic evidence can be provided. We were also not allowed to eat or drink on the bus. An hour and a half warm journey not able to have a sip of water was quite hard especially having to watch our driver eat and drink whilst he text and drove. As an adult, it felt very hypocritical and belittleing. Once arrived, no detail was given on when lunch would be provided. Tickets were handed out waiting outside the museum which could have been done in a more effecient way like the multiple times waiting for buses or on the buses themselves. We then did the first part of the tour and you are not allowed to eat or drink in there either so this is now going on many hours without basic water. The tour and guide was fantastic. Once Auschwitz 1 was complete we were given 10 minutes to eat lunch which is not an adequate amount of time, nevermind a trip to the toilet. We then finished the second half of the tour and headed back to the bus where we were once again told we could not have a drink on it. The main organiser got a lift back on the bus with the driver we had and not once did the driver use his phone. Once the organiser was dropped off, back he went to the phone again. It showed to me that he understood it is not only illegal but not appropriate to do on the job. I did tell the organiser that the driver was texting and driving and he had no response to give. Royal Tours are the company used.

Really well organised and such a life changing experience! If your are travelling to krakow I would %100 recommend the tour with royals tours