Published on tripadvisor here.
Title: This trip was torture.
This was a loud, callous party bus, not an experience for connecting to or respecting the landscape, its rich history and culture. The operator (who thought he was hilarious) shared very little interesting content in that regard. Most of the trip was awful music blasting so loud we had to use napkins to stuff into our ears for relief. As a function of that: no option to have special moments or conversation with the people you'd come with unless you wanted to be shouting over the music.
We didn't stop at very many lookout points in the Highlands or Glencoe, and the ones we did weren't the best - I found myself wishing we'd be stopping at two lookouts that were so gorgeous compared to any of the ones we did stop at. The operator lied about how small the Loch Ness area was so that people would purchase the discounted tickets on the ferry ride. Pitlochry shouldn't be included as a stop to boast in this tour, as the whole town is basically closed by the time you get there.
Towards the end, the operator flashed the lights off and on to match the gratingly loud music. Cherry on top of a full day onslaught of sensory overstimulation that had me in tears by the end. I have no idea how 13 hours straight of a flashing irreverent party bus driving through some of the most softly spooky dark foggy highland landscapes has rendered 5/5 stars on Tripadvisor. I swear to god it felt like the cold open of a horror movie where a bus of tourists die from creatures of ancient myth but nobody in the audience minds because they were behaving so poorly, ignorant and disrespectful of their surroundings.