I try not to write negative reviews, since this is someone's livelihood, but I don't want someone else to have our experience. I'll list safety concerns first and then quality/fun concerns later.
Safety concerns:
1) We took the sunset ride and it ran an hour+ late late for reasons I'll detail later, so at the end you had a bunch of mostly inexperienced riders going down a steep hill in the dark, in the woods and in the mud. Google it and you'll see most horseback riding sites don't recommend inexperienced people riding in the twilight or dark. We had an 11 year old boy whose horse fell (slowly) because the horse lost its footing. Thankfully everyone was safe, but it was a scary experience where a person or horse could have been seriously injured. I grew up riding horses, but I don't think I've ever ridden in conditions like these. I let the horse lead the way on that hill because I couldn't see a thing. We were in the trees, so there wasn't even moonlight. The kids thought it was a fun adventure, but in my experience, we were lucky something worse didn't happen.
2) One of the horses had some kind of issue, that made him a bad choice for beginning riders. My boyfriend was originally put on this horse, had problems from the start, and he got off the horse after it reared slightly. Thinking it was just a high strung horse, I switched on, since I'm fairly experienced. The horse was fine for a while then started reading a little, backing up, pawing the ground. I think there was an issue with the horse's bit or teeth, as there seemed to be extreme sensitivity on the reins. After the horse started rearing a little with me, our guide Richard decided to ride the horse. I spent the next roughly two hours riding at a safe behind the horse as the guide struggled with him. The behavioral issues slowed the entire group down. Our guide Richard was doing as good a job as I think could be done. Richard also called the owner, who said the horse was just being difficult after not having been ridden for a while. When our group was obviously slowed down, the lead guide, Jared, basically yelled at Richard to 'get control of your horse'. I can understand the comment the first time or two, but after the third time, Jared should have tied his horse, walked back and looked at the situation himself. It basically came across as mean and unhelpful. There is/was obviously an issue with the horse. The owner, to be fair, drove out in his truck to look at the horse, right before we rode into the dark. This was about the only extended period of time the horse wasn't behaving badly, which frankly I find odd. If I were the owner, I would have swapped out the horse or just cancelled one person's ride, rather than keep having a guide on a problem horse as the group is about to go down a tree covered hill in the dark. Alternately, he could have had us take a different route to the barn.
3) We were originally placed apart from the kids and the kids were at the back, with another inexperienced rider who kept stopping. My boyfriend, after the horse incident, ended up going to the back to be with them. There should have been a guide bringing up the rear. The whole group dragged out between the horse behavior issues and stragglers at the end. This was after we started late due to stragglers.
4) When I brought up the fall in the darkness to the owner, he was incredibly dismissive. His first comments were "these horses have been riding these trails hundreds of times and we've never had an issue. You need to lead your horse". I didn't get any sense of real concern about the child who fell in the dark. We explained it was too dark for us to see and the horse fell. Whatever, I gave up trying to make this guy take this seriously.
5) They don't require riders to wear helmets. I can sort understand this for adults, but I think they should require inexperienced child riders, at a minimum, to wear helmets. The helmet selection was not great - half had the liners removed so Velcro could rip out your hair.
6) the rein broke on the problem horse twice and I was on a too small saddle. I can understand having a limited number of saddles, they're expensive, but keep your gear in good condition.
About the only pros in my opinion: the sunset on the field was pretty, and our guide Richard was a very sweet person. read more