The Ride provides needless "street show"
There's a new tourist attraction in NYC called The Ride...it's basically a midtown bus tour that covers no more than 20-30 blocks. Along the way through traffic they have set up street performers...a ballet dancer, a break dancer, a couple of mimes, etc. Instead of a guide, you've got TWO stand-up comics "narrating" NY as you drive by these staged performers. TWO comic/actors pretending to be guides! They do a verbal back-and-forth which must be even more confusing to the tourists on board who are already dumbfounded by the ordinary sites and sounds of our metropolis! They are basically using New York City as the "backdrop" to their little Off-Off Broadway show.
MY question: why go to all this trouble? New York is already a stage show with things to see everywhere without having to "stage" events. The people who dreamed up The Ride probably took the awful GrayLine double decker tour and thought "we can improve on this" (anyone could improve on that). And perhaps they improved on Gray Line, but they have obviously never had a really good tour with a talented guide. A talented guide like me (Jim Dykes) or my friends Jane Marx, Robert Fields, Hardy Phippen, Marta Cooper, Mike Brennan or any number of others can make the city come to life using what is there already! A good guide can simply help a group make sense of the existing craziness and give you a nice historical, fun perspective on how it all got that way.
Why add "staged events" to the madness which ARE the streets of New York on any ordinary day? To summarize, a good guide can verbally paint pictures and create a "show" with much less effort and expense than these people responsible for The Ride have done. Plus you are paying a LOT ($75? $85?) for something which is basically a 20 block bus tour from 42nd St. to 59th St. BIG DEAL! At least with GrayLine's tour you get the whole city for your money and can jump off the bus whenever you feel like you've had enough.
MY question: why go to all this trouble? New York is already a stage show with things to see everywhere without having to "stage" events. The people who dreamed up The Ride probably took the awful GrayLine double decker tour and thought "we can improve on this" (anyone could improve on that). And perhaps they improved on Gray Line, but they have obviously never had a really good tour with a talented guide. A talented guide like me (Jim Dykes) or my friends Jane Marx, Robert Fields, Hardy Phippen, Marta Cooper, Mike Brennan or any number of others can make the city come to life using what is there already! A good guide can simply help a group make sense of the existing craziness and give you a nice historical, fun perspective on how it all got that way.
Why add "staged events" to the madness which ARE the streets of New York on any ordinary day? To summarize, a good guide can verbally paint pictures and create a "show" with much less effort and expense than these people responsible for The Ride have done. Plus you are paying a LOT ($75? $85?) for something which is basically a 20 block bus tour from 42nd St. to 59th St. BIG DEAL! At least with GrayLine's tour you get the whole city for your money and can jump off the bus whenever you feel like you've had enough.
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