Courtenay and District Museum and Palaeontology Centre·12 hr 25 min by bus · 184.1 km
! capacity is 15, your group is 16 · $21.33 a child is over your $10 budget
Cost
$341.25 per class
$21.33 a child for 16
Courtenay Museum members get 15% off all tours. The published figure is written as covering up to 15 adults; the site does not say how children are counted against that.
Fieldy handles all communication and booking for you.
What it actually looks like
Photos from Courtenay and District Museum and Palaeontology Centre's website
Our note
The published private rate is written for up to 15 adults and says nothing about a class of children, so that is the first thing to ask. Their school programs take up to 30 and cost less, so it is worth asking which route is cheaper for your group before you book this one.
What the children do
The same fossil tour booked privately for one group instead of joining a public tour. The museum publishes a single flat price for the group and describes it as covering up to 15 adults, so how a class of children is counted and charged has to be asked. Everything else matches the public tour: a talk and the galleries at the museum, then a drive and a short forest walk to a river site where tools and goggles are supplied.
Sit in the museum for a short talk, then walk through the fossil galleries. After a ten minute drive and an easy five minute walk through forest to the river, they put on goggles and use hammers and chisels to split shale and hunt for a fossil to keep.
Good to know
Three hours, starting at the museum and finishing on a riverbank, with tools and goggles supplied and payment due in full at booking. You drive yourselves to the river. Toilets, lunch space and bus parking are not mentioned.
Sources disagree. Their school programs page has been showing two different prices, an older one of about $120 plus tax and a current one of $150 for a group of up to 30. The $150 is what the page shows now. Get the price confirmed in writing when you book.
Sources disagree. The fossil tour price has been shown two ways, once as $36.75 for a child and once as $35 with tax added on top to reach the same total. Either way it comes to $36.75 a child, but ask whether tax is included so there is no surprise.
