I have booked many tours over the years. I have had some great ones, some OK ones, and this trip I booked the Worst Tour Guide Ever.

The kids already don’t love it when I book a tour guide. They don’t necessarily care to be told fun facts about sites (I do). And they certainly don’t want to spend time planning in advance (I don’t either). So I roll the dice, cross my fingers, and hope the reviews are factual.

I booked a Private Tour to Abu Dhabi through Get Your Guide (have had good luck with that app in the past). The tour was provided by Dream Journey. “Private” does not mean “luxury”, and Dream Journey was more like a Nightmare Journey.

Spoiler alert. We survived.

After several WhatsApp chats to confirm the time, and me yelling at the kids to hurry up and get ready, we can’t be late – he showed up 25 minutes late.

Our guide’s name was Zohaib. He rolls up in this POS SUV that might be fine for busting through sand dunes, but not really ideal for a 1+ hour drive. He had not cleaned his car in possibly forever. It appeared as though the airbag had exploded at some point. We all know how much Jay likes his cars – his feed is full of sweet rides. This, folks, was not a sweet ride.

As our luggage was getting shoved on top of his personal crap in the back of his vehicle, I looked at Jay and said, “if we’re going to bail, we better do it now.” We didn’t bail.

Awkward silence. I think maybe he had said his name once, but then it was silent. Um….

So after about 5 minutes I said, “What do you have planned for us today?”

“Just wait, I will tell you on the tour.”

I thought we were already ON the tour?!?!?!

Ty immediately started rapid fire texting our family group chat. “Bro, what’s this guys deal? Do we really have to spend the next 7 hours with him?”

He then talked to his wife on the phone in Hindi. Mrs. Zohaib. The. Whole. Drive.

Well, he stopped talking long enough to pull over and fill up with fuel. Apparently he didn’t plan ahead (weird) and thought that it was professional to spend part of our time at the fuel station. On a positive note, him getting out of the car gave us a few minutes to all look at each other, say “what the heck is happening?”, come up with a plan to get through the day as quickly as possible, and try to find the positives.

And then he filled up the air in his tires. Not exactly portraying confidence in our ability to arrive at our destination.

At one point he stopped talking to Mrs. Zohaib long enough to turn on the radio for about 10 minutes.

And then she called again. Back to silence. And family texting.

We arrived in Abu Dhabi and he drove us to Yas Island. I would love to tell you amazing facts about the island, but I didn’t learn a thing. I did, however, see the parking lot for Ferrari World.

Next stop in the tour was some sketchy market. From what I could tell, the sold a lot of dates. But Zohaib didn’t tell us anything. He just stopped the car, got out, went inside a shop, poured himself a coffee. Um. Ok? So what, we walk through this parking lot of date shops? Moving on….

Let’s drive by the Emirates Palace Hotel. It’s the 2nd most expensive hotel in the UAE. We literally did a drive by, through the check-in area, and we drove right on through…. If you are wondering why there are not many pictures in this blog, it’s because so far there were no good photos to be taken.

Maybe the Heritage Village will be worth seeing. From what I gathered by my powers of observation (definitely not from learning about it from our tour guide), it’s basically like a Living History Farms on a tiny scale. There was a nice view of the city and the water.

But wait. There’s more.

This part is actually good. The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque is the 3rd largest mosque in the world. It was massive. And beautiful.

After putting on appropriate attire for visiting the mosque – a prayer dress that covered me from head to toes (hot hot hot), our tour guide said “go have a look and come back to the car when you are done.” Ok??????? We walked through a shopping mall, food court, and looooong hallways to the entrance of the mosque. White marble + Bright Sun = so hard to open our eyes. But it was gorgeous.

We grabbed a bite to eat at the food court because we did not trust Zohaib’s ability to find us a nice place to eat, and then we headed back to Dubai.

Normally when we book through Get Your Guide, we get a link to complete a survey and share feedback about 24 hours after the excursion. Zohaib was pressuring me in the car to submit the feedback while driving home and send him a screenshot of it. “Just a few words is fine.” Yeah, no. I’m going to need some time with this one.

And then when we arrived at our hotel, he asked again if I sent the review. No, Zohaib, I have not, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to see what I have to say. Awkward.

I learned some things on this trip that I want to share.

Do: Skip the “tour” and rent a car to visit Abu Dhabi for the day. we could have rented a Mercedes G-Wagon for $100 more for the day. And then I would have had a better driver (Jay), control of the radio, a seatbelt that didn’t lock up every time I leaned forward, and control of our time.

Don’t, for the love of all things holy, book a tour with Zohaib.

Do: Visit the mosque. But bring sunglasses. And buy a pretty lightweight prayer dress anywhere in Dubai (or at the entrance) with a separate head shawl.

Don’t: buy a prayer shawl on Amazon in advance

Don’t waste your time on Yas Island unless you are actually going to visit one of the theme parks (there are several).

Do: end the worst tour ever by checking into the Atlantis Palm hotel. I will write more about that later, but the day went from a low to a high.

Do: Forgive me for sounding like a complaining, whiny, spoiled rotten little brat. I know how lucky I am to experience the things we get to see and do. And I truly am thankful. I’m also going to remind the kids about this every time I turn on the Gypsy Guide (Audio Tour that they HATE and I LOVE) in our comfy vehicles with dad behind the wheel that I could ask Zohaib to come give us the tour instead….