A guided tour depends very much on your tour guide and local guides. Our tour guide was no good, doing nothing for us other than making the necessary arrangements, which any clerk would have been able to do. Comments about food were dismissed e.g. our packed lunch for the 6 1/2 hour train ride from Chengdu to Yichang consisted of a soggy subway baguette, no drink, fruit or snack. Others were a bit better but still substandard, can't be classified as lunch.
During the cruise, I sat at a table with 2 others from another Wendy Wu tour. Their guide, Ryan, was there at the start, middle, and last day to see how they were or if they needed anything. Mine was nowhere to be seen throughout the cruise.
And on the last day, when our flight was delayed by over 3 hours, he would not change our departure from the hotel; we had to leave at 7am, with little breakfast, and hang around at the airport for 8 hours. I have submitted a formal complaint on this.
The saving grace on this tour were the two local guides - Troy who covered the Shanghai area, and Oscar who covered Guilin and Yangshuo. They were both superb guides, knowledgeable and helping us get as much as possible out of our trips. I would highly recommend them.
This tour on its own could easily score 4 stars, not 5 because we were denied entry to the palaces and the Chengdu breeding stations. With our tour guide, who offered little help and was not much good as a local guide in Xian, I would reduce it to 2 stars. But I have given 3 stars on account of the last 2 very good local guides.