St Charles Paddlewheel Riverboats

This might be slow and boring for some but I found it to be great. Its and hour cruise and you get history facts about St Charles. I only hope that they stay open when the colors change. Will be calling as soon as color change on trees.

I attended a corporate event on one of their boats. We provided our own catering and drink service so that is an option if you want to rent out the whole boat. The staff was friendly and courteous and it was a nice jaunt up and down the river. I’d say a one-​hour cruise is plenty as we did the two-​hour option and it was just repeated the same route up and down the river twice in between dams — but it was still lovely scenery.

Well went with family yesterday and was not pleasantly surprised. Many, many bees were swarming the top deck along the benches! We had 5 kids and all of them were afraid. Secondly they sell drinks on board for only $ 1, BUT you cant get up to get one otherwise they give your seat away. I had the kids wanting to go with me to pick out drinks and employee told me if we leave the top deck someone else can go take our seats. I told children to go back and I would go myself, and the employee actually told someone else that there is MY seat available up top! I told them that my family was saving my seat and they said you cant save seats for anyone. THUMBS DOWN! I will not go back here. It was boring, very monotone fact giver and young guy standing at stairwell was more worried about his phone or telling people my seat was open than to rather take the money for the drinks we purchased. Because there was no one doing that either.

This was one of the most boring hours of my life. If you want to be put to sleep with noxious diesel fumes than this is for you. If not, then don’t waste your time or money. The captain did give some interesting facts about the area but not enough to keep anyone entertained. Good concept. Bad execution. The brochure says that they do charters for parties which I could see being a lot more fun but not the 1 hour cruise.

These boats are just great for group charters. Sure, there may be fancier boats and prettier rivers elsewhere, but once our group boarded, this didn’t matter. The boat was immaculately clean and you could roam around. Smooth jazz played on the speakers but they sometimes have a keyboard musician.
During our leisurely 1−½ hour cruise along the Fox River, we enjoyed a buffet-​style fried chicken dinner with all the trimmings. The food was professionally catered, fresh, and portions were generous.