We made reservations on the Manatee Queen cruise the day before our trip. We were told to arrive at 11 to get our tickets and that boarding would be at 11:15. We arrived on time, got our tickets (‘admit two’ written on a post-it note) and went to the dock and waited to board. There was a gentleman getting things ready for a few minutes, but he soon left. By 11:35 we were wondering what was going on. The gentleman finally returned from the office and asked if the captain had come to talk to us. We said no and he said we needed to go find the captain.

We made the long walk back to the office and asked the receptionist what was going on. She said that due to a lack of customers, the tour wasn’t going to run. I said that since we had made an advance reservation, paid for the cruise and planned our day around this tour, foregoing other things we also wanted to do, that the tour should still run or that at least we should have been informed when we called that morning to verify our tour, that there was a chance that this might happen.

At this point “Captain Brian” hurried out of the back office. Without introducing himself he launched into a speech on why the tour would not run. (I would normally call his “speech” a tirade, but when I told him that I was going to post reviews on our poor treatment he yelled that I would lie. I promised that I would not, so I will not use words that might exaggerate.)

Brian talked for over a minute about how they had a large party scheduled to go with us today, but they didn’t show up. Apparently he hadn’t gotten any payment or contact information from this group and was unable to contact them. He went on at length that his business was about to go bankrupt because of the high price of fuel and the hurricane that cost them business the entire month of August.

After listening politely, I tried to break in and explain that we too were victims of the economy and that we had saved our $$ to take a short vacation to FL during the off season because that was what we could afford. I wanted to let him know that he had virtually cost us one of our 5 days. I only got 10 words out before he started yelling at us again. “You come in here and ask why the tour isn’t going and then all you want to do is cut me off. You don’t want to listen; you don’t care about anyone else. You just want to complain. I don’t care about you,” he yelled.

My wife took my hand and said “That says it all. There’s nothing else we can say that will change any of this. We need to go.” I nodded to the poor receptionist who looked like a deer caught in headlights and told her to have a nice day.

My wife and I walked out and were half way across the large parking lot when the owner came out the front door. We didn’t say a word as he continued to yell at us for being bad customers, expecting him to cater to us even if it caused him to lose his business. We didn’t turn around or respond. We just kept walking as he yelled until we reached our car.

For the record Captain Brian – we do understand why you didn’t run the boat trip when you were going to lose money. What we don’t understand is why (1) you didn’t warn us about the possibility of the trip not running if there weren’t enough people. We booked a sunset tour of the lighthouse across the channel the day before and they warned us this was possible so we decided to do something else instead. (2) We don’t understand why you took our money and had us wait around for 35 minutes without telling us about this possibility. (3) And even if there was a large group that didn’t show up (which I do not believe) why did you let us stand down at the dock for 20 minutes after boarding time and not come to talk to us?

There are many on-line reviews on Captain Brian’s rude treatment. Sir – maybe you need to consider the possibility that your business is floundering due to your customer service instead of natural disasters and the economy.