I very, very rarely review anything. This is the first time I’ve bothered writing a review in years. I feel obligated to for this service specifically.
The TL;DR is don’t do this tour, it is very, disappointingly bad in multiple ways: uninformative, annoying, and they try to rip you off throughout. It is so bad I feel like I genuinely let my fellow travelers down by going with this tour.
This tour is essentially an 8 hour sales pitch to buy things from various friends of the “Egyptologist”, or to go on different “tours” later in the day or in the future with them.
I put Egyptologist and tours in quotes because the actual information you receive on anything is surface level at best, and downright incorrect occasionally. There is little ability to answer any questions. So if you would like to learn anything substantive, I recommend looking elsewhere.
Note that the tour guide will try to earn trust with you by saying this day is for you, but if you try to say no to something, it is very difficult for them to accept it (for my group, we had to say we didn’t want to go to the market 5+ times, even just to look).
They also recommend outrageous tips. We were told if we wanted to tip, that $5-$7 per person for the camel rides was suitable. Which for Egypt is exceptionally high.
Then, you go to different authentic stores, which are just the friends of the tour guide. It’s typical for the guides to receive kickbacks of everything you purchased for any guide company in Egypt, but this was egregious. The guide was upset we weren’t buying more.
So you see the pyramids, sphinx, go to a fake Egyptian specialty restaurant that had some of the worst food we have had, go to a couple of stores they want you to buy from their friends at labeled as authentic experiences for extremely overpriced perfume and tinctures, then a bad painting store, then the market (but we didn’t go), then the antiquities museum. They show you ~5 things with some facts then just want you to walk around by yourself where there are no labels. Then they try to get you to do other stuff with them.
Two stars because they did show up and bring us to places, and had an ok car. But this was the most disappointing tour I’ve literally ever been on, both in my native country (USA), and any other.
I don’t recommend.