The Electric Riverboat Angela Louise

First time and it was great :-)

My boyfriend and I had an amazing time on the Riverboat’s New Year’s Eve cruise, and I feel like everyone else on-​board did as well. I highly recommend it. :)

We had a very unpleasant experience dealing with the owner of the The Angela Louise last night. We took my 87 year old mother on our electric boat over to the Newport Landing Restaurant for dinner. We docked in 3 hour parking on the public dock near the Pavilion, had a wonderful dinner and returned to find our boat totally blocked by the Angela Louise (it had been out while we parked). The owner was on his boat, but when we tried to ask him to move so we could get out, he sayed «no entiende» and acted like he didn’t understand. He gave us the reservation line phone #, and wouldn’t help us. After 15″ of calling and pleading, with my elderly mother standing there with her cane… we offered him $ 20 to move and suddenly he can speak english and says he was just giving us a hard time, haha. He finally moved his boat up, which took him 2 minutes of loosening the lines and was not a hassle at all! What a total jerk. I would never go on this boat. Very unprofessional and creepy! If I could I would give him no stars!

The reason I write this review is that I recently recommended the Angela Louise as a venue to someone and they mentioned to me the reviews on Unilocal.I wanted to give my personal experience about the Angela Louise, captain Rick, and his staff.
I have not been here for the happy hour as others are commenting about this. However I did spend more time here as I was married on the Angela Louise in January 2011.
First let me say captain Rick was a great person to deal with. He made my wife (back then fiancée) and I feel completely at ease. He graciously extended a special to us that had expired but we had previously seen on his website.
The day of the ceremony everything ran very smoothly. The staff made my wife feel very comfortable from the get go. When I got to board the ladies that were helping were very friendly. Above I could hear captain Rick getting our guests pumped by singing the love boat song. I could tell it was going to be great.
The ceremony went smooth, the food was good. We got to play all our own music that we wanted. Everyone had a great time dancing, and enjoying the cruise.
In fact the only downside was by my wife. With everything that was happening she didn’t get to enjoy any of the delicious cake that was included. But even that was not that big of a deal as everything was perfect. I still get reminded of what a great day that was by friends and family that were in attendance.
We both truly thank you for the wonderful memory in our special moment captain Rick.
Joaquin and Dianna

My 10 year old wanted to go on the Riverboat Angela Louise. So we went on what was advertised as a «floating happy hour» a 20 minute cruise. As long as you bought taco’s, burgers and a drinks.
My youngest bought 6 tacos and my eldest son and I bought 2 a piece.
I had a beer and my eldest had a bottled water. Youngest had a soda. $ 28.00 cash.
The place was dirty where we found seating up stairs. Then we ordered and were told to come back in 10 minutes to pick them up.
Ten minutes later we had spun literally around in two full circles in front of the boats docking spot with the engines off.
Feeling sick from spinning i asked the driver are you going to keep going in circles? He rudely said it’s free what do you expect.
Well it wasn’t free the taco’s were horrid. Had the runs after-​wards.
The fat man that ran the place; Rick Garcia when i told that it was awful to cut the engines 5 feet out of the mooring and spin, was rude. He too felt he was offering a good deal. Then he got abusive. Then offered to refund the taco money. Waited, waited. Then he packed up his area and ran away.
A bit later we walked past the dock and told a guy debating it, don’t bother it’s a spin not floating happy hour. Even though he leads you to believe it’s 10 minutes out and 10 minutes back.
He sees me chatting and gets on his load speaker and announces he has an unhappy costumer and all walk away.
Do not waste your time!

FREE boat ride with a catch (2 drink minimum) and a spin. They are not exacting, as you can buy whatever you like, no one is strict on checking, once on board.
The view is ever changing of the Balboa Peninsula, Harbor and Island. With ferries coming across every couple minutes, big boatloads of fisherman, rental boats, kayaks, and other watercraft, the sea show goes onward.
This boat was playing the theme from the «Love Boat» a couple times when we first strolled on by. An announcement came on that they were leaving in 10 minutes (very misleading). It played that announcement at least 3 or 4x afterwards, so by the time we boarded and it left it was close to forty — five minutes later then the original departure quoted.
The last yacht I went on was in Marina Del Rey. It was a 60 footer, and we took off to Paradise Cove, with a bilingual private French chef on board who also doubled as a deckhand. The experienced French captain looked more like Julia Child and definitely knew the ropes. Unfortunately I got seasick after eating the French quesadillas. I did go right to sleep and woke up to barking sea lions in the Santa Monica Bay as we returned.
This time we prepaid for the drinks and food in the bar downstairs, a ticket was given, which is handed over to the chef. I didn’t buy a drink, but as luck would have it, here again I was faced with a quesadilla (light cheese) with salsa, no beans available + marinara pasta/​salad/​garlic toast. Since they seemed to be training a new deckhand I watched carefully. My order did not get burnt but others did. A couple more handfuls of salad were provided upon request.
Before the boat even departed from the port, the passengers who sat across from our table howled in laughter. Why, because we all finished our dinner before the boat even left. It was a joke, were we ever going to depart?
Peales of laughter flew from the people in the paragliding boat nearby. The Catalina Flyer boats’ occupants watched us too and smiled. We must have provided some amusement for the wedding party in a ballroom a couple of stories up on top, as they were stared at our boat too. What was so funny?
We finally left the dock, only to find out the boat only goes about 100 yards away. What do they do there in the harbor? The boat spins in circles! Slow circles, half circles. Ha ha ha! Talk about letting your cares float away. I felt as though we were on the old time TV show «Candid Camera.» We finally returned to the dock thirty minutes later.
This boat «cruise» is only recommended if you want to stick close to shore and are not persnickety about your food. Or maybe if you have a fear of going into deeper waters and do not want to be faraway from land. Next time I’m on Balboa Peninsula I might try the Sea Lion Tour, given by a nearby boat company.