Summary: Poorly organized departure process, dangerously over crowded and poorly organized cave, no lights provided in dark cave, very little information provided, and cave little like the photo.
Full review:
We took our tour on the second day of the season and they kept apologizing for being a bit disorganized because of that. I'm going to still review the experience we had.
The team was completely disorganized and we spent the first 15-25 minutes in a crowd of people fighting for space on a van. They had plenty of space available, but had a bunch of people and a bunch of vans and hadn't pre-assigned anyone and the last tour's vans were late coming back. We kept being told to wait in different places by different people and then people would crowd up to get onto vans, the people crowding up were getting put on vans so I worked my way to the front and got my wife into a group finally.
Our guide was friendly but said his headset had gotten stolen from the van and so he couldn't make any announcements enroute to the cave, he gave us a few tidbits of information when we arrived to the lot and when we were waiting around outside the cave, but there wasn't a ton of information.
The experience in the cave was chaotic and unsafe. Nobody was told to bring flashlights nor were they provided. We were told to use our phones to light our way. Most of the cave was opaque ice and so very dark. There were many groups from the same company (Glacier Mice and Crystal Cave Tours) and we were all crammed into the cave waiting around in the cold and dark. There was barely space for two way traffic so it was hard to get people in and out, everyone coming out was struggling on the uneven ground and with the limited space. The "crystal cave" could only hold 4-8 people and so we were told small groups would be taken at a time, but one guide went out of the cave all together and one went into the "crystal cave" so nobody was controlling the flow from the dark portion into the "crystal cave". Some people regulated ok, but then others went before it was their turn which ended up cramming the smaller cave.
When it was my wife and my turn we went, we were posed in front of the cave while the guide shone a flashlight at us and took some blurry photos and then told to head back out. We got maybe 30 seconds to look around and the cave looked nothing like the photos advertised. I get that we're dealing with Nature here so have some understanding, but after everything else the white dirty walls and poor lighting were somewhat disappointing. They seemingly took the best year and used it for the ads and then are delivering a sub-par choice.
On the way out from the "crystal cave" another group from company pushed their way in and squeezed us up against the wall. I kept yelling that there wasn't enough space, but neither the guide with our group or the other group cared at all. We had to push our way out of the cave past incoming people who didn't give a care in the world and were just standing right in the middle. At some point we were climbing on inclined sand and my wife almost twisted her ankle (it twisted and rolled but she caught herself before the point of bad injury).
We were left cold, frustrated, and with a almost dead phone battery from using it as a flashlight unexpectedly (I ironically had a flashlight in the car and a headlamp which I should have just brought but thought everything was provided).
I was going to give a slightly higher rating but then we took a Lava cave tour with another company (https://thecave.is/) and the contrast with this one put this in a very very negative light (the other tour provided clear information and facts about the cave, organization with one guide at the front, one guide at the back, clear confirmation of how many people went in and came out, and head lamps for all participants).
The team at Glacier Mice / Crystal Cave Tours didn't seem to care at all, but if I were to make easy improvements I would suggest:
1) Pre-assign people to drivers so there's clear organization at pickup. Even if our driver wasn't back yet from the earlier tour we would have been happy to just sit to the side until called if there was a clear assignment
2) Have one guide in the crystal cave, and one guide in the main cave to regulate traffic and not create dangerous situations
3) Provide head lamps or station portable lights in the cave
