Elephant Sanctuary Reviews 10

They claim to be an ethical sanctuary in Chiang Mai.
The terms & conditions page shows they send you to Ran-Tong, which is an unethical place.
Before our departure, I had a bad feeling and sent them through Whatsapp. They answered immediately admitting their malpractice and refunded the entire amount. Don't use this site.

I was very worried when I saw these reviews after having booked Elephant Sanctuary a few months ago, the contact no had changed but I did get an instant reply confirming my booking. The driver was early to collect us, it took an hour to collect everyone on the tour , 10 in our group. We were taken to Ran-tong. We learnt about the elephants, fed them and a couple of us washed them. We enjoyed the half day experience. Lunch was nice too. The guide seemed to know a lot about them and they looked well looked after. But yes, perhaps a bit touristy.

The stay was terrible. Our guide barely spoke English, told nonsense and made unfunny jokes. I learned absolutely nothing about the history or purpose of this place.
At times, the guide forgot about our group, playing with dogs instead, while we were left on our own. The organization was very poor.
According to the plan, we were supposed to prepare food for the elephants, but in reality we were given only a few bananas and a basket.
I would not recommend this place to anyone. In my opinion, this is a form of elephant abuse. The elephants are beautiful and the location has potential, but the staff and the program are a complete disaster.

AVOID. Elephant Santuary.org is NOT a sanctuary. They are a booking agency and a shoddy cowboy outfit. UPDATE: After much persistence on my part, they did refund 50% of the fee due to their mistakes. The website is entirely misleading. I thought something was wrong after booking (because they refuse to disclose the name or location of the sanctuary) and repeatedly gave my name but these “cowboys” left me standing on the pavement for 90 minutes, whilst refusing to talk and telling me on WhatsApp that the driver was five minutes away! I have asked them to compensate me for their incompetence but they have since repeatedly fobbed me off - will update if that changes. To be fair the time I got to spend at the sanctuary - Rantong (see if it is possible to book direct) was excellent but don’t use these cowboys!

Do not book this tour!

This is a scam, the actual place isn't called elephant sanctuary est 2007 but its Ran Tong sanctuary.
We waited 2 hours in the lobby and tried to call multiple times with no success. AI is replying to the whatsapp chat.
We are trying to get a refund as nobody showed up.

This elephant-sanctuary.org doesn’t exsist. We were picked up with one hour delay. Then waitet another 30 minutes in the Bus because the other guests was told a complete other pickup time. We were brought to the Ran Tong Sanctuary with a big delay. The experience there was great. Although the groups were much bigger than on the Website promised. We wrote to the WhatsApp contact. She didn’t respond to all our complaints.

This is ran-tong save and rescue elephant centre, not as described elsewhere by the site. The groups are of about 20 people on site split into morning, afternoon and all dayers. The elephants do get breaks between groups seem well cared for and site guide and local mahuts have loads of knowledge.

However ethical elephant sanctuary est 2007 does not seem to exist and seems to be confusion on who they actually are ( 3rd party?). On first payment had confirmation for pickup between 7 and 7.30 for full day, but stated would provide travel details day before for full day visit of taxi/ car pick up. I was not contacted, and when i chased both on the day before and day of there was no response for multiple lines as even my hotel was trying to assist. I was lucky that my hotel advised that morning only groups are usually picked up between 7 to 7.30am, whilst day visits are usually picked up between 8 to 8.45 am as I genuinely thought this was a scam due to lack of contact from ethical elephants 2007.

Whilst experience by ran-tong was good the contact provided by ethical elephants was poor and smoother information flow may be provided by others

This is a scam! Theres no Elephant Sanctuary behind!
This guy (Vee) just books you to random ones, but they are never as advertised on the website. We had a lot of troubles through him and gave us a lot of headache!
Don't book anything from this website, all fake!!

SANCTUARY DOES NOT EXIST!
I booked over this website to get to the Elephant Sancturary est.2007 and I got driven to a place called : Ran-Tong Save and Rescue Elephant santurary

It is false advertising. If you want to go to Rong-Tong that's fine but I wanted particularly to go with a small group what was promised on the website but in the end we had approximately 3x the group size to what was promised. And even tour busses arrived additionally to the large groups that already had to wait to get clothes and shoes because everything was already in use.

It's Ran-Tong Save and Rescue Elephant Centre in disguise.

You're promised to be in small groups but reality is that you're in groups of ~25 people and there's MANY groups arriving through the day.