As a referral from a family member, we didn't have any reason not to call the Cocoa Beach Shuttle Service. We called 3 days prior to the day we needed service, and everything was booked and ready to go, with an arrival time of 12:15 to take us to Port Canaveral. Staying in one of a billion condos on A1A, we stood outside so we were able to flag them down. 12:15 came and went. At 12:30 we called to find out where the shuttle was, and it appeared that they either forgot about us totally or were just completely inept and tried to cover it up, asking us for the exact same information we gave when we booked the service in the first place. We were told the driver would be there in 10 minutes. Guess what? 10 minutes came and went too. We were starting to get a little nervous because we had only a short time until we were supposed to board our ship. After another 20 minutes we called back to find out that the driver was ""stuck in traffic near an arts festival"" and would be there in 5 minutes. For the third time I was given the ""just a few more minutes"" speech. FINALLY the driver showed up. He was extremely nice, and we were relieved for the moment to be on our way. They asked us if we wanted to pay up front for service a week later from Port Canaveral to Orlando Airport, which we declined because we were told the shuttles ran 'quite frequently' from the port. Fine, thank you for the ride.
We were off the ship one week later at 9:30am. At first our plan was to take the shuttle to Cocoa Beach because we had very late flights and some time to kill. As it turned out, the shuttles that 'ran quite frequently' was NOT a true statement. We watched group after group leave with ease on other shuttle services. After 3500 people were spirited away to their final destinations, the only people waiting for shuttles now were Cocoa Beach Shuttle customers, the rest of whom paid ahead of time for service and had no other choice than to wait for them to show. We were constantly told AGAIN by the representative, ""just talked to the driver, only a few more minutes"" Interestingly enough, one of the drivers was ""caught in parade traffic"". Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't arts festivals and parades planned ahead of time, and shouldn't a shuttle service be aware of these events so as to re-route themselves AROUND the traffic? Or was this just another excuse for lateness, like the arts festival a week before? Also we saw several Cocoa Beach shuttles come in, drop people off, and then leave. Why???? Not ONE of them could have taken us to the airport? There were only 4 of us in our group. Finally after almost 2 hours of standing, we went to the TravelLynx representative and asked if she could please have someone take us to the airport (we had obviously missed our opportunity to hang out at Cocoa Beach and sight-see a bit before our flights). We were loaded up THAT INSTANT and on our way. Our bad decision for not doing that two hours before!
I would not recommend this service to anyone. They were completely unreliable, and it was insulting that they kept saying 'a few more minutes' as if we were children who needed to be placated. All in all we waited over 3 hours for service. NOT acceptable!
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