Ludus Tours - World cup 2014 Review

I booked my world cup trip for my two sons and myself via Ludus tours. there has been LOTS of stuff on this board, some possible spam from Ludus, others from the board accusing them of being a scam. One poster I contacted via direct message asked that I provide my impression after the trip. So here it is.

Was it perfect? Nope, but it was good.

I won't go into price, but as a very UNSEASONED international traveler I was not comfortable that I would get the details right for this trip. As it was a college graduation gift for my two soccer crazy sons, I wanted it as good as possible. So after google search and research I went with Ludus. My digging found exactly one bad review, albeit I didn't find very many in general. Coincidentally this one review from the London Olympics, was also sent to me by the poster above.

So here it is, the good and bad. Overall, I'd use them again, but I also have some small suggestions for them.

We booked this trip, probably a year or so ago. There was no issue getting a trip quote and details was straight forward. I spoke on the phone at least twice with the sales rep, and I had a quote with details in my hand. I went with the "3 star" hotel option rather than the "5 star" option to save money, and because honestly all I figured I needed from a hotel was a clean and safe place to sleep, I feel this was a good move.

First issue I ran into was actually paying them. I wanted to send checks, they wanted auto-bank withdrawal on a monthly basis. I won, but they weren't accustomed to this. Coincidentally half way through this they merged with Red Carpet Tours (or something like that) and this complicated the last 2 checks as I made them out to Ludus, they returned them and I re-issued a single one to the new company.

Christy then became our main contact. She is the World Cup coordinator for Rio. She provide periodic updates, reminders and surveys to find out what people wanted to do in Rio. All this went smooth and she was very open with answers.

I chose to get Visa's on my own as the company they contract with didn't do the free world cup visa, this was painless and easy, and Christy helped very quickly with information I needed for the applications.

She helped with info for airline tickets and suggestions on price fluctuation patterns based on passed history, which was very accurate.

So, off we went on a Journey from Boston to Rio.

After some typical airline "fun", we made all connections, but all wiggle room was used up by random crap. We walked out of the terminal to find the Ludus tours contact standing there with a sign. He had our names and quickly passed us off to our driver, yes our driver (I expected to have to hang out waiting for others) who quickly took us to our hotel. This was 9:30 in the morning.

At the hotel, our Ludus tour person for the week was there waiting. He was actually the rep for that hotel. Our room wasn't ready, but they took our luggage, he pointed us to the fan fest and off we went to watch Argentina play.

Several beers and several hours (ok, we got lost, none of us were smart enough to remember the street), we got back to our hotel to be told our reservation was "cancelled", which upon arguing and asking when and who cancelled, were told that they have no record of us.

I tried to explain we where there that morning and met our Ludus person who promised it was right, the hotel person was less than helpful, simply kept telling us to leave. I showed the paperwork with the hotel name, turns out with a Ludus typo it had the wrong address. This made things worse. Finally I called Christy, got voice mail - and honestly now having nightmares of being screwed over - called the next number on the Ludus contact list: Rich. He answered, I explained what was happening and he assured me I was in the right place and all reservations were verified the previous night. I put him on the phone with the hotel clerk, who then proceeded to hang up on him! Rich called back, was hung up on again, we were told to leave, again. 5 minutes later the clerk got a new call, from the hotel owner. We now had a room.

Rich got me on the phone again and assured us we were ok, being checked in now. He asked if we were going to "happy hour", when I told him I had no idea where it was, he said he'd be over in 15 minutes to bring us. Rich is the director of operations.

At happy hour several people apologized for the mess, including Christy and Nate the VP, Sales and Marketing. Everyone was great.

That was the ONLY issue with Ludus during the week and they came through quickly to fix things.

Other stuff they coordinated (included in the price):
- Nightly happy hour from 6-8 at one of the beach kiosks, including 2 drinks, 2 for soda, water, coconut (very good if you squeeze a lime into it) and light food. Happy hour doesn't happen when you have a tour day or dinner.

- Tour of Rio. Met at 8:00 AM in lobby, did Christ the Redeemer, lunch at a Brazillian steak house (great!) and sugar loaf. Included a guide to give us history, help with the language, etc. Lots of fun!

- Dinner night at a Brazillian Steak house, all Ludus hotels were here at once, probably 100 of us, great time!

- "Escort" to Maracana for games if needed. We used this the first game, but not the second. Met in lobby 4 hours before game, hit the metro, he took us as far as he could without a ticket, told us how to get back. Piece of cake.

- Breakfast included each day.

- Transportation back to airport. Only issue with this is the "rule" is they pick you up 4 hours before your flight, which may make sense for traffic, but our flight left at 5:30 AM, so they picked us up at 1:30 AM with no traffic. Problem was the airport doors are open but nobody is working so you can't check in bags, we ended up sleeping in very uncomfortable chairs until 3:30 when TAM airlines people showed up to take our bags.

Our hotel was about 400 yard walk to the beach then about 1/2 mile down to fan fest. Good location.

Overall I was pleased and glad I used them.

 

I'd say I agree 100% with this. Possible exception of the 3-5x markup, but honestly I don't know for sure. It is a tradeoff, one that you will pay for whenever you enlist the services of others to do what you could, in theory, do for yourself:

- Save substantial money and do it all yourself, find hotels, food, find your way around, no "fall back" person if things go wrong (like at our hotel).

- Pay someone else to do all that and take the stress off you, also gives you a fallback person if things go wrong (like at my hotel). Also gave me a reliable resource to ask questions to, something I did over the last 6 months, for things like Visa, money, fun things to do etc.

Some people love the detail work, and are comfortable with it. About the only trip I'm comfortable doing that on is a cruise, but then again, most of that "detail" is removed because your restaurant, food and fun is all in the boat. For a trip like this I was simply not ready or able to do the chasing of the details, find a hotel that would be close to where I wanted to be, find the tour, the dinner was great.

For me, personally, on my first ever major trip like this, doing it times 3 where it was critically important to my wife and I to have it go smooth as it was a present for our sons, it was well worth the extra money. I have infinite respect for those of you who have the experience and knowledge to chase it all down on your own, but for this trip, that was not me!

could we have done it cheaper and got a basically identical trip? Absolutely, but I had no clue where to start and would have stressed over it endlessly.

 

Can anyone translate or the gist of it? Best I can guess from that is selling tickets, but that's based on the numbers shown?

Edit: Never mind, plugged in google translate, yup ticket scalping. That stinks, the one in the yellow shirt is the one that saved our butts at the hotel screw up.

All I can say is it was never offered to us, or others that I know if, but we already had tickets.

 

Yes and no. Tour packages are you paying someone else to do the details, worry about reservations etc. If you are comfortable doing this all for yourself, AWESOME, go for it! In these cases it really makes no sense whatsoever to use a company, pay more and get what you are comfortable doing on your own. I wasn't, for this trip, so I was more comfortable paying someone else to take the headache off my shoulders. I had no clue what needed to be done, how to find "good" hotels, etc.

As for the people, yes, there were some older and some families (like mine and another family we ran into), there was also a group of 5 guys in their 20's, and a young married couple. The demographics spanned all over the place. As for being told where and when to go, that was really up to you, yes they had an agenda and people to help you get everywhere, but that was your choice. The group of 5 for example didn't use the company to get to games, and on arranged/planned nights, they were on the bus to get to dinner, but then stayed and went club/bar hoping on their own. It's really up to you, it's your trip, you can go entirely on your own, or go every step that the tour has setup, or anywhere in between.

Tours aren't for everyone, but they do have their place, yes they cost more, but for some, that tradeoff is worth it. For others, nope.

 

For what they charge? I compared it to several other groups I found and chose them, cost wise, they were all in the same ballpark. I do remember the spam and yes it was annoying, but for me, they came through. Yes they got caught selling tickets, and honestly, this is probably enough to have me never use them again (though I don't forsee an event I would use a company for in my near future anyway), while yes scalping happens, they make their living at these events, they should have known better and should be held to a higher standard that the average attendee.