We got had on Mackinac Island
Our travels took us across the UP from west to east, landing us at Straits State Park, right along the Straits of Mackinac (pronounced MACK-in-aw), where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet. The must-see feature of this area is the Mackinac Bridge, a 5-mile-long towering spectacle that takes vehicles from the Upper to Lower Peninsula. Straits State Park has some incredible overlooks of the bridge.
A short drive away is Bridge View Park, where we got to see even more perspectives of the bridge, plus see an exhibit about the bridge's stats and construction. We went once in the daytime and again at night, so we could see the bridge all lit up.
Then after our stay at Straits, it was finally time to tow our home over the bridge. It was the perfect day, with little wind and clear blue skies. The lakes looked gorgeous.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves, because there was one other place we visited while we were in the UP: Mackinac Island. It's a huge tourist destination for travelers to the Northeast side of Michigan. You can catch a ferry from St. Ignace on the Upper Peninsula, or Mackinaw City on the Lower Peninsula. The island's claim to fame is that it does not allow motor vehicles. To get around, you either walk, bike, or take a horse and carriage. It's like traveling back in history! In addition to this unique trait, the island boasts the Grand Hotel, a fort, a state park, shopping, restaurants, and more.
Since we're from Massachusetts, we see the comparable destinations being Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, and we will admit, we don't typically frequent either island. They get crowded in the warm seasons, and vibe-wise, they're not exactly our cup of tea. We will say, however, that no fish and chips dish has ever beaten the one we got on Martha's Vineyard back in 2021. We've been trying to top it ever since, but Town Bar & Grill in Edgartown reigns supreme. Keep that restaurant in mind if you ever journey over to Martha's Vineyard.
We hoped that in our visit to Mackinac Island, we would find some fun activities and good food. Beyond that, we kept an open mind. We had heard a lot of good things about this place. When we arrived to Straits, we planned our island visit for the next day. I went onto the website of Star Line Ferries because they were the closest ferry dock to our campground. There, I was able to purchase our ferry tickets ahead of time, and they offered a whole bunch of add-ons, including a bunch of activities we wanted to partake in. I ordered the HydroJet "fast ferry" tickets and added on a carriage tour, Grand Hotel admission, Fort Mackinac, and the Butterfly Haus conservatory. The total came to $224 – $111 each plus a $2 online convenience fee. Not our cheapest excursion, but we expected things to be expensive on the island, because that's usually how islands are. We were cool with the price because we now had our day trip planned and ready, and we also made sure to choose a gorgeous, sunny day.
Purchasing ahead of time may have been convenient, but the ticket delivery was not. We got them sent to us through email, but each ticket came up as a separate toggle when we clicked the "get tickets" part of the email. It was 10 tickets in total, which was a lot of toggling to get to the correct one. To make matters more challenging, the morning of our ferry ride, we went to download the tickets ahead of time, but the website was down. No website = no access to the tickets. We decided to just head to the ferry dock anyway, and maybe the workers could help us.
Parking at the dock was confusing. We had read online that there was priority parking, but we didn't pay for it. When we arrived, there was a big parking lot, and we saw a little cone that said "priority." We parked on the other side of it, but it was still just as close to the dock as the "priority spots." We just crossed our fingers that we were in the right spot, and we headed to the ticket booth.
As we waited in line, Anthony kept trying to get back on the Star Line website, and finally, the server was up again! We were able to access our tickets, and so we left the ticket line and went straight to the ferry line. At first, Anthony didn't see a way to save all 10 tickets, so he screenshot them one at a time. Later, he discovered he could have "printed" them to PDF, so he did that too for safe keeping, even though that would mean a lot of swiping to find the right ticket at every activity.
The fast ferry ride took about 15 minutes, and it officially marked our first time on Lake Huron.
We visited Mackinac Island on a Monday, but since summer vacation had already started, the island was reasonably crowded. Even with the sounds of pedestrians and the clip clop of horse hooves, the lack of engine noise was very noticeable. It was strange being in such a crowded place but not hearing the humming and revving of motors. That plus the old timey façades of the buildings gave us a good first impression of the island.
But that impression only lasted about 5 minutes. We walked up the street to the Carriage Tour Company and the lines for the ticket booth were really long. We didn't know where we were supposed to go, since we already had purchased tickets. We first went over to the boarding line, but the woman told us we needed to go to the ticket booth. So we chose a line and waited about 15 minutes. During that time, Anthony read the price sign and realized that the Carriage Tours offered a combo ticket that included basically all of the excursions we purchased online. Only, adding that price plus the price of the ferry, we realized we could have saved money if we had waited and purchased our tickets in person. The Carriage Tour Company doesn't offer online purchases in advance. So there we were, utterly stumped. Typically, there is some kind of incentive to purchasing things in advance, but in this case, we were gypped.
The process for the carriage tour was to wait in line at the ticket booth, show our pre-purchased ticket, then get a boarding time for the carriage, wait a half-hour to board, and then take the tour, which would last about 1 hour 45 minutes. When we arrived to the ticket booth, the girl seemed confused when we showed her our tickets and asked the other girl in the booth what to do. She said to just take a photo of the tickets. Evidently the bar code wasn't scannable. As she was getting us set up, I asked her, "So we bought these through the ferry company, but there's apparently no advantage to doing so? Because we just realized that if we waited and got the combo ticket here, it would have cost less." She shrugged. I continued, "So we spent more money and we still have to wait in line?" Anthony chimed in and advised her that someone should talk with the ferry company to make sure the prices are more consistent. She gave us a snarky grin and said, "I will be sure to go to the CEO personally and tell him." I told her we don't appreciate having shade thrown at us, and then we took our boarding tickets and walked away. I was fuming. It was clear that this girl was new for the season and maybe she was overwhelmed, but we certainly won't be the only people complaining about this price gouging, so wouldn't she want to be aware of it? In our conversation with her, we also made it clear that we weren't blaming her but were just frustrated and confused, but she still responded with disrespect.
We walked around while we waited for our boarding time, and with a few minutes to spare, we made our way to the boarding line, where we waited a few more minutes before getting on the carriage. Within 3 seconds of talking, we realized that our guide was very, very new. She didn't seem comfortable, kept making really awkward jokes that didn't land, and she spoke in a sing-songy voice that was extra grating due to the low quality speaker in the carriage. As she showed us around town, her descriptions of places were very wrote. Later, when someone asked how long she's been working for the company, she said it was her first week. It was fine. Everyone is new at some point, but when we're spending (extra) money to take the tour, we wish we could have a decent guide. We've noticed in a lot of our tours that the guide can make or break the experience. Riding through the streets of Mackinac, we also discovered the downside to not having motors. The roads reeked of horse manure.
As we rode along, we wondered about the combo tickets. Nowhere did we see instructions on how to use the extra tickets, and of course we had a few to use as well. We weren't sure if people were allowed to hop off at certain places and get back on, or what. Eventually, the carriage made its way to the "half way" point of the tour, where apparently the guides change. This location held two of the combo ticket add-ons, the Surrey Museum and Wings of Mackinac, a butterfly conservatory. Not our butterfly conservatory, though. We found out during our pre-carriage-tour walk that the Starline Ferry add-on was for the Butterfly Haus, and that's different from Wings on Mackinac. Two butterfly conservatories on the island. How many times do we think people go to the wrong one? Even Google results messed them up! We did notice that the Butterfly Haus was the better rated of the two, so we were happy that we bought that one. For the record, admission prices are the same for each.
From what we gathered, anyone with the combo tickets could go to the Surrey Museum and Wings of Mackinac before hopping back on a carriage to finish the tour. As much as we would have loved to give a different guide a chance, we had no desire to get back on a carriage. We forfeited the rest of the tour and decided to head back down the hill on foot, over to the Grand Hotel. We will never know how combo ticket holders redeem the rest of their tickets. Do the carriage tours also drop people off at the Fort? Because that is one of the combo ticket activities, too. A little organization would do this company wonders, but it doesn't seem like it's going to happen. And based on our theory of "poor company management makes for miserable workers, makes for miserable customers," we've figured out why our experience reeked worse than the manure.
Now that we were no longer dependent on the carriage company, we hoped to turn the day around. We walked the .6 miles to the Grand Hotel and tried to figure out where to redeem our tickets for admission. Admission to what, exactly? We couldn't figure it out. Online I read that admission covered access to the lobby and porch, but we walked straight up the main steps, onto the porch, and then into the lobby.
Our carriage guide mentioned that the Grand Hotel boasts the world's largest hotel porch, and that made us scratch our heads. We got married at the Mount Washington Hotel, and their porch is massive. This porch looked nowhere near as large. We did the research. The Grand Hotel holds the record for the "largest front porch of a hotel" at 660ft. Qualifiers are important here. "Front" and "porch." The "veranda" that wraps around the front, side, and back of the Mount Washington Hotel is 903ft long. We noticed this "qualifier conundrum" a few times on our tour. The Mackinac Bridge is the "longest suspension bridge in the Western Hemisphere," but it's actually the longest between anchorages. We've been over both the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in NYC and the Golden Gate in San Francisco, both of which are actually longer than the Mackinac. Can't fool the travelers. We just wondered, why all the fishing for accolades? Why not just be real and talk about what's awesome about the island? Surely, there must be something!
Alright, so they fudged a few accolades. We would have been able to get over it, except we would soon fine even more fudging - both figurative and literal. But we'll get into that. First, we need to find what is up with this Grand Hotel admission.
We walked around the lobby looking for any indication of where we were supposed to go, but we found nothing. Eventually, we went over to the concierge, who told us to exit the main doors, head down to the end of the hotel where there is an ice cream shop, and enter the side door. She said we would get a self-guided tour and map. Okay, at least that's something...we thought. We went down to Sadie's ice cream, where we overheard a woman tell her family that admission to the hotel was $10 per person. "Excuse me, did you just say $10?" I asked her. We had paid $12! We got to talking with the woman and her family as we all went inside to the ticket counter. We discovered that the "self-guided tour" was just a pamphlet with a map, and there was literally no other offering. It would get non-guests of the hotel into the lobby...but we were already in the lobby. We tried to tell the woman that they don't actually need to pay, but we got called up to the ticket counter before we could tell her that they could just walk in through the main doors. It's not like guests are wearing giant signs on their head that say they're staying there! But the ticket lady, who probably caught onto our underhandedness, told the woman that they must pay, and so she shelled out $50 for her and her family.
We, of course, had our tickets already, and so the ticket lady took down our bar code numbers. Manually. She too had no way of scanning the codes. Then we got our maps and were directed to a different entrance – the one that the laymen enter through because we aren't privy to the guest entrance, supposedly. We passed by a wine tasting room, a sitting room, and an art gallery, and we also went upstairs and saw a couple of conference rooms. All of which we could have accessed when we went through the main entrance.
When we left the hotel, we were angry. Anthony put it best. He said he hates operations that "punish only those who are conscientious about doing the right thing." That's exactly what this is. Those of us who try to follow the rules need to pay $10 (or in our case $12). Everyone else who can't care less can just pretend they're guests and go into the lobby.
Also, can we please just make it very clear that it's a HOTEL LOBBY?! If the Mount Washington Hotel tried to charge admission for entering the building, people would be up in arms! And that hotel has some real history to it, history that allows it to not need to boast its 903ft veranda on tours of the White Mountains. Also, what good is it really doing to force tourists to pay $10/$12 to walk a lobby for 10 minutes? Peak season room rates go for almost $1000/night! Greed is not a good color.
We needed to regroup, and so we found a tavern and hoped lunch would perk us up. We went to Yankee Rebel Tavern in an attempt to find a place that wasn't super expensive but was still well-rated. The service was quick and our waitress was friendly, but the food was average at best. My salad had rusty lettuce, and both my chicken basket and Anthony's fish basket tasted like frozen food you could get anywhere. We longed for the Town Bar & Grill fish and chips on Martha's Vineyard.
Two salads, two baskets, and two iced teas = $100. That is "reasonably priced" on Mackinac Island.
We considered waving our white flags and leaving the island, but we really wanted to go to the Fort. We've always had fun visiting forts on our travels and wanted to do something actually historical and educational. We will warn you though, that it is a hike and a half to get up there. The fort is perched on a very high hill. We ran into a lot of people who disappointedly opted out of going because they didn't have good enough mobility.
We stopped at the ticket booth to redeem our tickets, and the girl wrote our codes down manually. We were noticing a pattern, and so we asked her, "What's up with these Star Line tickets? You need to write like a 20-digit code down each time someone uses one?" She responded, "No comment." That was our window. "Well, you might not be able to comment, but we can." We proceeded to tell her how confused we were because we bought these tickets hoping that they would be a good deal or at least help us save time, but they turned out to be a total waste. Unlike Carriage Chick, this girl actually seemed to care and honestly said she would mention it to her manager. THANK YOU! Because here's the thing. If the folks at Star Line aren't communicating with the folks at all these other places, why are they selling the tickets? Star Line seems to be duping these other companies as much as they duped us, and it's not fair to these companies to need to field the complaints of visitors to the island.
The girl told us that if it's any consolation, we do get admission to other places with the purchase of the Fort ticket. There are several other historical buildings around the island, a few of which we saw on our half-carriage-tour. We weren't planning on going to any of them, but we were happy to see an actually decent deal. Only, there was a problem.
"What are we looking at, Nicole?" Oh, I'm so glad you asked, dear readers! On the left is the map we got from Fort Mackinac, which lists all of the places we could visit for free with our Fort ticket. On the right is the combo ticket offered by the Carriage Tour Co. Notice how they make it seem like you are getting ALL THOSE THINGS for the price of the ticket, but now we know that the Biddle House and Manoogian Art Museum are included in the Fort ticket anyway! Except most people won't know that until and unless they go to the Fort first, but the Fort is way across the island and most people are going to take the carriage ride there. Deceit deceit deceit.
Alright, let's talk about the Fort, because we were right: It's worth a visit. First off, the views are spectacular. The hike up the hill sure pays off if you're able to do it. There were reenactments and we even got to catch a cannon demonstration. Each area of the fort had exhibits showing the daily operations, the living quarters, and the history. The fort is most famous for being the scene of two battles in the War of 1812 when the British fought the US for control over the Great Lakes. The fort was seized by the British in one of the battles, but later returned to the US after the war.
Feeling a little boost in morale, we decided to stop over at The Butterfly Haus before heading back to the mainland. We have been to a few butterfly conservatories over the years and always enjoy them. This one was very small, but it was well run and had lots of different species of butterflies. We chatted with the woman at the front desk for a few minutes while she was writing down our bar code numbers by hand. She told us that the island still gets two-day delivery with Amazon Prime. Even funnier, on our way back to the dock, we actually saw the Amazon delivery...buggy?
We made one last stop on our way back to the ferry: Murdick's Fudge. Fudge is a big deal in this part of Michigan, and Murdick's is the OG. This fudge started it all in the early 1900s, and soon other shoppes followed suit. The fudge makers credit the temperate climate of the island for the successful texture. However, being the OG, we knew that might also mean it's a mediocre tourist trap. Our fears were quickly quelled when we tried samples of chocolate walnut that they had on their countertop. It was delicious! So fresh and chewy, with great flavor. We sprung for their "buy two get one half off" discount, which was three pieces for $29. Over-the-top prices once again, but at least we knew we were getting some good fudge.
Oh, except we weren't. When we got home and tried it, we realized that Murdick's, too, had duped us. The samples were strategically fresh, while the rest of their fudge was packaged God-knows-how-long ago. When we ordered, we thought we would at least be getting pieces from inside the display case, but instead, they took already wrapped pieces from behind the case. It was a bit hard and crystalized. Not terrible, but nowhere near the quality of the samples we had. We shouldn't have been surprised. There was a lot of fudging happening on Mackinac Island.
While we waited for the ferry, we wondered some more about the organization of the ferry services. Everyone seemed to know where they were supposed to go, but how was this possible? We had booked fast ferry tickets, but we had only ever seen one line. What about people who bought the classic ferry tickets? Anthony took another look at the website and read that the Star Line ferry from St. Ignace was only a fast jet. The classic ferry option only ran from Mackinaw City. The webpage that lists the ticket options doesn't state this; only the actual ticket page does. This makes it impossible to compare ticket options.
We discovered the same problem with the priority parking. Evidently this too is only available in Mackinaw City, but no one would find this out until they decided to buy it, went into the ticket page, and realized it wasn't available. That's if they noticed at all. The writing is there, but it's not super visible unless you diligently read the descriptions, which lots of people probably don't when they already feel they've made their decision on what to purchase. What Star Line should really do is put a landing page where the customer clicks whether they're departing from St. Ignace or Mackinaw City, and then show the available options. But they don't seem to care about making things easier for the customers.
What's weird is, we saw that "priority" cone when we arrived to the parking lot. What was it for? We will never know. Thankfully, our parking spot turned out fine, and Clyde was still there in one piece when we arrived back to the dock.
We never like to write posts with a negative slant, but we wanted to share this story truthfully so that we can help anyone who plans to visit Mackinac Island for the first time. Learn from our mistakes! Purchasing tickets in advance didn't matter. Purchasing through the ferry company was a waste of time and money. If you go to the island, grab your ferry tickets at the dock and then decide your activities once you're over there. If you buy a Fort ticket, take advantage of the other admissions you get for free. We cannot recommend the Carriage Co, but it is the only public carriage tour company on the island. If you want to spend the money on a private horse and carriage tour, this seems like a great option. Otherwise, there are plenty of bike rental shops, or you can bring your own bike over to the island. Ebikes with throttles are prohibited, which is why we didn't take ours. Also, if you want to see the Grand Hotel porch and lobby, just head up the stairs and take a peek. But you didn't hear that here!
We know that our experience is unfortunate and that plenty of other travelers have loved their trip to the island. We think that's great. The island has a lot going for it. It's beautiful and it feels like you're stepping into history. Unlike lots of tourist destinations that are too expensive for workers to live there, the island offers seasonal housing for a lot of workers in the summertime so they don't need to commute via ferry. The state of Michigan owns over 80% of the island, which helps to preserve its landscape and heritage. Plus there is plenty to do, whether you go for the shopping and dining, for the tourist activities, or for recreation in nature. Will we ever go back for a redemption visit? Probably not. We have had incredible experiences on our travels, but we simply can't win 'em all. As for Mackinac Island, we will take the loss, but we hope that our story will help you learn what not to do, so it can be a winning destination for you.
Editor's Note 8/12/24:
We got news that Starline Ferry services have been bought out by Shepler's Ferry, the other ferry service that departs from St. Ignace. Due to this acquisition, Starline has halted all services. In typical Starline fashion, customers who already bought tickets can exchange them for Shepler's tickets, only they need to go and do so in-person. Because why make things convenient?! Looking back, we wonder if our Starline experience was a sign of their impending closure, or perhaps our scathing review was the final straw! We just hope that Shepler's Ferry will not add extra excursions to their ticket options. No one needs that complication.