Grey B.
Yelp
The tubing itself was fun, but this review is not about whether or not tubing is cool (it is), it's about whether or not DRT is legitimate, fairly-priced, kind, and safe business. TL;DR - definitively, it is not.
Additionally, my tube had a hole in it, but luckily it was small enough that the tube was mostly still inflated by the time we were done, so no harm there. Other run down aspects of the business, if you care about those kinds of things, include the storefront and the buses, which were old and run down. Normally, we seriously wouldn't care except that, at $61 per adult, the price is EXPENSIVE (quick note on the price - they told us it was four dollars cheaper than it was when we arrived). And they didn't even provide the free BBQ meal they promised (it was never made available), and then the "3 to 4 hour float" (per staff) was clocked in at under two hours, both of which made this experience an even larger rip off than it would have otherwise been.
But none of that is why we asked for a refund. We asked for a refund because, to be blunt, DRT had zero interest in public health or our safety. Despite being told everyone would wear masks, about half the staff overall were not wearing masks. The bus drivers both on the way to and from the river did not wear masks. Of the staff that loaded the tubes into the buses on the way out, two of the four were not wearing masks. Neither of the staff loading the tubes on the way back were wearing masks. Most of the older, manager-type staffers were not wearing masks either. We had to implore the staff to enforce the mask rule while in close quarters on the bus to the river. The buses we were told would be at 50% capacity, and they were more like 80-90% both ways, so social distancing was not an option, making those masks very necessary. The bus driver on the way back had people without masks hold a single-use paper napkin over their noses and mouths, and was angry with us that we asked they enforce their own mask rule. At the end of the trip, as if to say, "What a financial opportunity this pandemic is!," the return driver said she was gonna send send a junior staffer to Walmart that night to "buy a box of 100 masks for a couple of bucks," then "sell them to people on the bus for a dollar" each, which of course means that they're already planning to let more people on the bus without masks, all so they can make a few bucks. I can't believe I have to write this, but price gouging public safety equipment at the expense of public health is not a good look during a pandemic.
We asked the friendly front staff for a refund, since they didn't even try to live up to their promise of keeping us safe (what they told us their policy was when we first arrived and inquired), and they said sure, we just had to speak with the manager first. We waited for a few minutes and were then told that the manager wanted us to speak with the owner, so we waited some more. The owner then phoned in and told us what we experienced could have never happened because of their supposedly sufficient public health measures. After being told I was a liar, he told me how much training they were going to do with their staff, and blamed all his problems on the poor teenagers he hired for the summer. I tried to inform the owner that they were not even following their own, insufficient rules, he cut me off and would not hear it. After shouting at me for a minute, he refused to issue a refund, so at that point we just left.