Contact us

A small editorial team, not a call centre and not a booking desk. There is no contact form and no ticket number here. Send an email and a person reads it.

Things worth writing to us about:

• A price on this site that has moved. These listings reprice with the date, the sailing and any add-ons, so if the lake-and-river card reads $45 and the listing says something else, we would rather hear it from you than catch it on the next monthly re-pull.
• A listing that has vanished, gone unbookable, or quietly changed what it includes. Whether a firm price is shown up front, which dock a cruise boards from, and how long it actually runs are the lines that matter most: a tour that quietly moves its boarding dock or trims its run time has changed the thing people book it for, and that is a correction we will make the same day.
• A factual error anywhere on the site. The river's 1900 reversal and the lock system behind it, the season and harbor-lock closure dates, which operator runs a route, where a boat boards, or the buildings a cruise names, all of it comes from official and primary sources rather than from operators, and all of it can go out of date.
• An operator whose tour is not here. If you run a Chicago river or lake-and-river architecture cruise with a real, currently bookable listing, published figures and a route that holds still when it is read twice, send the link and we will read it the way we read the others. Nobody pays to be included and nobody can pay for position, so the answer depends only on whether the listing checks out.
• A question that neither the FAQ nor the guides answers.

Email info@chicagorivercruises.org

What to expect back

An honest answer, not a fast one. Corrections get priority and usually go live within a day or two of being checked, because a wrong price or a wrong boarding dock is the kind of error that costs somebody their afternoon on the river. General questions take longer, and some of them get answered by adding a paragraph to a guide rather than by return email, which helps the next person asking the same thing. We do not send a newsletter, we do not follow up to sell you anything, and we do not pass your address anywhere.

What we cannot help with

We cannot take a booking, hold a seat, move your date, cancel a place or issue a refund. None of those are ours to touch. Every tour on this site is sold and run by somebody else, and the booking lives on that operator's own listing rather than on any system of ours.

So if the question is about a booking you have already made, the confirmation email you were sent is the fastest route. It carries your reference, the pickup instructions and a message button that reaches the people who will actually be at the door on the day. On a same-day question that beats us every time, and if a departure is ever in doubt, it is the only channel that can do anything about it.

Two details worth checking on that confirmation before you write to anyone. The boarding dock first: the Architecture Center's cruise on Chicago's First Lady leaves from 112 E. Wacker Drive, Wendella's cruises board a block away at 400 N. Michigan Avenue, and Shoreline Sightseeing runs from the Riverwalk near the Apple Store and from Navy Pier, so check which one your listing names before you plan your morning. Then cancellation: each operator sets its own window and its own terms on its own listing, so the booking page is the authority on both, not this site.

Still deciding which cruise? The four kinds of Chicago river cruise narrow seven listings down faster than we can by email, and the guides cover the timing and the lock-closure dates that sit underneath most of them.