Trip Report: Niagara Falls (May '08)

Ruu_Old

Flight:

American Airlines (American Eagle) Champaign-Chicago-Buffalo. We flew from where I live in Champaign and connected in Chicago to Buffalo where our taxi was waiting for us to take us to our hotel which was 40 minutes away from Buffalo International. Aircraft was an Embraer 140 I think, sufficient legroom and a quick flight (30 minutes from Champaign to Chicago and about 1 hr 20 minutes to Buffalo)

Hotel:

Courtyard Marriot Niagara Falls, nice rooms for the price. We had a spa tub and king size bed for our room. Very clean, has a very high standard and staff were brilliant/ I paid a little bit extra for that and we had a city view which we could see the Skylon Tower and Niagara Skywheel. It was Memorial Day weekend so we could see the fireworks from our room too.

What to see/do:

If you wanted to buy souvenirs, most of the shops have the same things so keep an eye out for the best prices. Most hotels have coupons for some of the shops as well. Our hotel had a great tour package (and I normally like to do the attractions myself on trips) that we decided to do. It started off early in the morning and took around 5 hours to do, ran a little over because our tour guide/driver let us stay extra and made several stops for people that weren't even on the list which was nice. Some of the attractions listed didn't need to be done on the same day, you could do so at your leisure. It included:

* Journey Behind the Falls
* Maid of the Mist
* Skylon Tower (extra ticket to ride free to the top)
* Niagara Falls Aviary
* Butterfly Conservatory
* Souvenir City
* IMAX Theatre
* Niagara Skywheel
* White Water Walk
* Shuttle pass for the duration of your stay take you from hotel to a number of the attractions, convenient times.

There was a $30 off coupon in our hotel room for the tour and it came to $119 Canadian per person. It wasn't rushed and I think everyone was delighted with the amount of time given for each attraction.

Eating out:

Stay away from the chain restaurants, they will rip you off.
Mama Mia's is a lovely Italian place that has homemade, fresh food. It is a little more expensive but the best meal we had during our stay. Very nice setting and romantic.

Hope it is useful to someone and any other questions, let me know.

bills

ya its amazing, did it a couple of years ago. Hope you went to niagara on the lake too, beautiful little village/town. Its so different from the strip at the falls. Full of little craft shops, sweet shops & B&Bs etc. Lovely town.

adamski8

niagra falls was really dissapointing, once you've seen them for about ten minutes thats enough as far as im concerned, i heard the noise ws deafing but itsounded like someone jsut had a hose on or something, just throngs of tourists and the surrounding town is just nauseating. Maid of the mist was boring as hell aswell, just got slightly damp going towards the falls at 2mph. how you spent a whole holiday around it i dont know, i did hear behind the falls was good though