Harbour Star

Harbour Star tours offers a very interesting informative tour of the harbour area of Toronto. Though what you will see isn’t really special, of any particular significance or interest, the views are. You can’t get a better view of the City of Toronto than from a boat in harbor; absolutely breathtaking and well worth it.
The tour boats themselves don’t amount to much, not the most comfortable and on the real downside are equipped with one of the worst sound systems ever with the added fact when there are periods of no tour narration they insist upon playing some of the worst crap music ever instead of allowing you to enjoy the serenity, peace and quiet of your tour cruise.

As part of the hop on hop off tour of City Sightseeing Cruises you get a free 45-​min narrated harbour cruise on the Harbour Star. You can buy the cruise separately for $ 12 (students), $ 13 (online) or $ 15 (walk-​up). The tour seems pretty quick buts it’s a great way to get the most famous view of the city. If you want to get off at the islands this isn’t for you. Take the ferry instead ($ 7). You might consider doing both however because the narration on the cruise is interesting. There are two boats. One had just indoor seating, the other has the same but also offers a top open air deck. Both boats follow the same tour path. You get good pictures of the city, Porter airport, the islands, boats and kayakers etc, and nature among the quiet and calm waters of the islands. Departure times aren’t set in stone — the boats leave when they are full at lines can get pretty long. You will find the ticket office over by Amsterdam restaurant and the boat across white Amsterdam bridge (second dock to right).

We signed up for the night cruise on Canada Day. It seemed like a great way to see the fireworks in the city at night. The fireworks in Toronto that night with some of the best I’ve ever seen. And the boat was a quite unique and beautiful wooden cruiser. The crew was young and fun, the passengers were oldies.
One slight problem, we were told our tickets included top-​shelf drinks and nibbles — there was no mistaking this, we discussed it at length at the ticket booth before we bought the tickets. Once on board however we discovered that this was not the case. There was no food, the drinks were not included, and the liquor brands were not recognizable. We were shanghaied, so we simply coughed up 60 dollars for drinks, essentially the tip we would’ve given them otherwise.
Be that as it may we enjoyed the night on the water and would consider it again.

Fun, relaxing, unique way to see the city. Our tour guide was excellent and knew how to provide the right amount of information and humor to keep it interesting. Great photo ops of the city skyline. Especially enjoyable because we got it free in conjunction with the City Sightseeing Bus Tour. Main downside is the boat is not very clean when you’re in the lower level.

I had a Living Social Deal for the Shark Attack but the boat was out of commission so they substituted this boat tour. This tour is only $ 12.86 if you prebuy it online.
The Harbour Star offers a 45 minute relaxing boat tour on the harbour with not much narration. It did allow for some fantastic pictures of the Toronto skyline though.
They were supposed to discuss the following sites… but did not. They did discuss a couple of these though.
Toronto’s amazing skyline
Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport
Hanlan’s Point
Gibraltar Point Lighthouse
Wildlife Sanctuary
Centre Island/​Centreville
Island Yacht Club/​Muggs Island
Toronto Island Marina
Forestry Island
Allan A. Lamport Regatta Course
Ward Island/​Algonquin Island
Royal Canadian Yacht Club
Queen City Yacht Club
Polson Pier
RedPath Sugar Refinery
Ferry Docks/​Westin Harbour Castle
Pier 6
Queen’s Quay Terminal
Harbourfront Centre
All in all, our guide seemed friendly and it was a relaxing tour.