Bad: Buses didn't run as scheduled. Two of the buses had no AC downstairs and it felt like a sauna. Good: Drivers were friendly and as helpful as they could be with broken down buses. They also were great maneuvering in heavy traffic. read more

OMG. First day on the bus it was 80° outside. There was no air conditioning on the bus and no windows that rolled down. Absolutely stifling. Day2 They had given us a route pamphlet that has the alleged stops on it. We're better with paper than with an app so we use that. Walked all the way to the address given for the US Capitol at Garfield Circle stop, Just to find out the big bus doesn't come here anymore. Tried to take a lift to find the bus at one of the other stops. But after 10 minutes, the Lyft ride canceled on us. Finally ended up getting tickets for the old town trolley. Big Bus was such a waste of money. And no way to get a hold of them to even ask for a refund. Use the Old Town Trolley!!!! read more

Big Bus Washington DC - Address no longer a stop yet they are handing out the pamphlet with this route stop - Bus Tours Near Me - Washington, DC, District of Columbia

Liars and thieves. No audio tour. No A/C. No Refunds. But guess what does work? Chargebacks!!!! Avoid these bozos at all cost. Plenty of 1 star TripAdvisor and Google reviews from people who aren't paid shills. read more

Big Bus Washington DC - Bus Tours Near Me - Washington, DC, District of Columbia

We took the Hop-On Hop-Off bus tour starting from Union Station. First of all, the woman selling the tickets inside of Union Station was very nice, but she was confused about a lot of things. There were 6 of us in our group, and she did say that if we purchased several tickets together (I think 4), we get a 10 percent discount. This was helpful, so we purchased all of our tickets together. On the ticket receipts, there were discount coupons for various things, and we had to show the bus driver the receipt every time we hopped back on. One of the discounts was supposed to be a free bicycle ride at The Wharf. So we got off at the Wharf & Potomac Boat Cruise. We left my elderly Mom and one other person in our group at Shake Shack on the wharf, and the rest of us proceeded to walk to the place where we could get on the bicycles. But it was not on or near the Wharf! We ended up walking for at least 30 minutes or more, to get to the bicycle rental place. It was an overcast day and it was drizzling, so that was not good walking a long distance. We finally found the place, and then found out that the coupon was not good for a free bicycle ride! It turned out that we had to pay for a one hour rental, and get one hour free. Well, since it took so long to walk there, we hardly had any time to bicycle, and everyone said "forget it, we'll pass." We were already tired, and ended up taking an Uber back to the wharf. The bus tour itself was fine. We were given headphone wires to plug into the bus seat, to hear the tour narration. We also found that the map of the stops were not logistically correct. For example, we wanted to see the White House, but when we exited at the corresponding stop (#17), it was a really long walk to the White House. We thought that one of the other stops on the map would have actually been closer to the White House, and the map gives the impression that the attraction is right where you hop off the bus. Since it was cold, windy and drizzly, it made walking long distances extremely unpleasant for many in our group. Although we didn't have any issues with our bus itself, I do want to mention that my sister's husband went on the same bus tour two days before us. He said that there was a problem with his bus, which flooded or something, and all passengers had to get off the bus, and they had to wait for another bus to pick them up to continue the tour. read more

Big Bus Washington DC - Hop-On Hop-Off brochure with map inside of the stops. - Bus Tours Near Me - Washington, DC, District of Columbia

What happened to the BLUE and YELLOW Loops [Washington DC] The DC hop-on, hop-off Big Bus have reduced their routes since our last visit to Washington in 2018. They used to have a Blue Loop and a Yellow Loop but those routes have now been consolidated into just the Red Loop with less stops. The bus still takes you to Arlington Cemetery which is a must visit but no longer takes you to Georgetown Harbor. I'm glad that we were able to visit most of the sights during our first time in 2018 because service has been amended on this MLK weekend due to intermittent road closures and motorcades to accommodate inauguration events. The route skipped stops #11 (Lincoln Memorial), #12 (Arlington Cemetery), and #13 (WWII Memorial). It was still nice to be able to see the major attractions but disappointed that there was less of it now. Review #1195 updated read more

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The Big Bus doesn't even deserve one star. The guide is audio and you cannot hear anything. There is no way of knowing where you are or what you're looking at. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY read more

The bus tour was nice. It stopped by all the major monuments and memorials and allows you to get off and on as you'd like. I appreciate that our driver stopped for a moment and went slowly by the attractions so we could take pictures. Tip- buy your ticket on Groupon, it'll be about half the price. read more

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My family and I were visiting DC for Father's Day weekend. We saw that Big Bus was on Groupon and decided to buy it since our group included children and my dad who is low mobility. We started our tour at the Spy Museum where we encountered one of their employees, Devanghn. He was super nice and was really patient with our group and answered all of our questions. He was so great he even gave us recommendations of places to see apart from the Big Bus Tour. The tour was really good and if you don't want to get off you can see most sites from the bus. They make sure to stop at the visible sites for a few secs for everyone to get a good view. We really enjoyed the tour and would do it again. read more

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We bought tickets at 12.25 from an agent outside The Spy Museum. We waited more than 30 minutes for a bus, the first one that came was full. There was no system for lining up so people who were there first were dealing with others pushing and shoving their way to the front (door of bus) These buses have a middle door but the drivers made everyone get off at the front which really delayed exiting and boarding the bus at each stop. Biggest complaint however is that the tour finishes at 4.30 and at no point was this mentioned by the guy selling the tickets. He just kept saying they were good for 24 hours. Obviously I didn't think they were running for 24 hours but was rather shocked and then annoyed to be stranded at Union Station. Seriously paying $58.50 per ticket was a rip off. Fair enough I should have read the small print online before purchasing but this review is in the hope others don't end up like us paying that amount for such a short amount of time. Unless you are not getting off which really defeats the purpose of hop on hop off I would not recommend this company unless you get to your stop when they start at 9.30am as their definition of 24 hours is only really 7 hours. read more

Big Bus Washington DC - Bus at Arlington Cemetery - Bus Tours Near Me - Washington, DC, District of Columbia

Instructions about how to engage with the tour were very poor. We were almost to the 3rd stop and wondering why there was no narration before another passenger clued us in that you have to grab your own ear buds (from a big plastic bag on the main level of the bus) and plug into the little jacks on the back of the seat in front of you. By the time we got our ear buds and returned to the upper level, other people had grabbed our primo seats in the upper front panorama window. There were some non-English speakers seated near us who had no ear buds and probably had no clue that there's multilingual narration you can dial up on the little jack boxes. The seats are TINY; it's impossible for two normal-sized adults to sit side-by-side comfortably. AC flow seemed weak, but we went on a cooler day so we weren't suffering. The recorded narration wasn't always in sync with what you were seeing out the window. If you have an idea of what you want to see, I think it would be a better value to take other (cheaper) mass transit directly there. The narration is skimpy (and pretty corny), so it's not a great "tour" of the sites where you don't get off to visit. read more

A horrible experience in the Summer. We bought a 48 hour pass and every bus we went on was packed to the max... And there's no A/C on the bus. If you aren't familiar with the Summers in DC, it gets hot and humid. They appear to have no system of letting people on so some people were just standing on the bottom level which, again, has no windows and no A/C. You can imagine the body heat (and odor). The tour itself was not very informative - we did a tour with a different company in Boston which was 100x more informative and funny. The bus drivers seem surly and I still have no idea why we stopped for 25 min in the middle of the sunset tour. Overall not worth the money, especially in the summer. read more

I got this at the request of one of our party in a wheelchair. We were there on a Sunday. From the start the driver was quite nice, lowering the ramp to help get the wheelchair on and lock it in place. This wasn't the situation at every stop, sometimes it was just me putting the wheelchair in place. But often he would ask the person in the nearby seat to move in order to allow for handicapped seating. He also encouraged us to grab the earbuds before sitting down. The main negative about this experience was the heat. Being unable to walk to the top deck, we often sat in the lower one. 80 degrees outside meant 100 degrees inside the bus with little to no ventilation. We were pretty much in a sauna for the trip and happy to get off when it was time. Maybe some air or working vents even??? It was a good route across the city and you got to see a lot, the app makes it easy to know where the bus is and hop on, hop off. read more

Big Bus Washington DC - Riding along the Potomac - Bus Tours Near Me - Washington, DC, District of Columbia

thought we would have live commentary not an audio tour by earbuds. It would've been good to know that Arlington cemetery was "closed"; we were told to check their website, which showed open. Not the bus company fault but construction left us in a circular "off route" route for about 20 minutes. We could've walked faster & seen more. read more

Wow, 1.9 stars with 639 reviews at the time of this writing. I stupidly didn't check Yelp before booking this thing, and worse, booked through Groupon leaving me with zero options since doing a chargeback with Groupon will cause me to loose my account and stored credits I have there. So anyway, was in DC for Memorial Day weekend. This is an important weekend in DC, so one would think a tour bus operator might staff appropriately for expected demand. Not the ol' Big Bus, in fact, they didn't bother to staff up to what I'd suspect is even a normal weekend. I book at ~9:30am for same day, via Groupon for the red loop. We walk to the pickup point, hop on. Turns out our next stop is the Union Station primary starting point, where we'd got on at 16 near the Grand Hyatt DC. First stop was a long one, and they made us change busses for whatever reason. Okay, move to the next bus, which had already begun to load, so all the better seats were taken since our bus was put on it after everyone else. After pulling away, they inform us that this would be a mostly driving tour as they did not have all the normal staff active yet at 1030am, so only two of what should have been sixteen stops will be occurring. I mean WTF seriously; sixteen stops turns into two. They said we could get off and do it later when they'd be back to normal. And remember, this is a tour ticket that stops at 459pm, so it's not like they were going to extend our use of the service even though the product purchased was not yet available. We got off and did our own tour via Spin scooters which have an excellent $13/hour (of actual in-use time) rate. Groupon was useless, best they'd offer is $20 gift card, even though the product we purchased through them was not what was made available. F both of them. read more

Big Bus Washington DC - The tour we paid for, versus the two stop tour that was offered when we got on the bus. - Bus Tours Near Me - Washington, DC, District of Columbia

We bought the 48 hour pass, which included the night tour! This is by far the best way to enjoy the sites. You have to option to hop on or hop off whenever you want - to see whatever you want! Since this is our first time visiting, I highly recommend this. But buy your tickets at least a few days before your trip! I highly recommend it. read more

No air. Supervisor beyond rude and disresepectful. Driver had told us air not wyeah orking. Referred us to speak with supervisor. Attempted to speak with supervisor who told me in a nasty tone " first all this is a open air bus up top, no air. He continued to deride me saying I was rude for asking Then started talking to customers about me. I asked him to stop talking to me as he kept talking and got loud. Since I had not gotten his name and I did not want to talk to him I took his picture with I intent to report him. He stared yelling repeatedly "Tajuan Fox" that's my name several times making g a scence. I again asked him to stop talking to me. Then once again he talked to customers about me. Extremely unprofessional. read more

Big Bus Washington DC - Supervisor in middle of frame at kiosk - Bus Tours Near Me - Washington, DC, District of Columbia

The good: I accidentally booked the wrong day, but the customer service live chat fixed it with no problems. The buses do come often, and you can track them on the app The bad: even though the bus comes often, we found ourselves waiting 10-15 at each stop, frying in the sun At our first stop no one told us to grab headphones, so you don't really know what's happening or when you're supposed to stand up to get off the bus. There was a lot of guess work When you check in you are given a paper ticket, if you lose that, you are out of luck - even though you have a QR code on your phone. Our bus driver still let us on, but was kind of a bummer to know we'd be chancing it if we got off the bus and had a different driver. I wish I did a little more research. Almost everything on the list is within walking distance, we didn't really NEED the bus. read more

We do hop on hop off bus tours wherever we go. This was the worst one we ever did. They no longer have live descriptions of what you are seeing, just a recording of 2 insipid people who tell you almost nothing about what you are passing, and often after you have passed the site Stick with a provider that has live descriptions... read more

Your tour should include facts about all the historically significant buildings and monuments. We wasted $90 to listen to ridiculous information about Washington slang, and references to ignorant or slow people called, "bama." Right now we are sitting at a stop and it has been over 20 minutes. We don't even know what building we are sitting at. Boo. read more

Big Bus Washington DC - Who knows? Just sitting on the bus wishing we had our $90 back. - Bus Tours Near Me - Washington, DC, District of Columbia

In the last two months I have done big red bus tours in San Francisco, New York City and Washington DC. The sound system sounds like a 1940s phonograph and needs to be updated. Please! Next time I will search for a different company. I do enjoy the concept but everyone complains about not being able to hear the dialogue. read more

Horrible experience. Just walk or get the orange trolley hop on hop off. We always waited at least 30 minutes for a bus, no ac and customer service is horrible. read more

Should be ZERO star. We had to ride around on their dilapidated un airconditioned buses for our hop on hop off experience. For aging and seniors who seek a cooler way to view the city and choose to sit below or they would be scorched by the sun. Below could well have led to heat stroke with 90 degree/humidity and no air conditioning. Their representatives lied about another bus coming along and 1 1/2 hr later another non airconditioned bus came by. Asking for a refund they say through GROUPON (dont buy it!!!!) all sales are FINAL! What a bust. DO NOT USE THIS BUS COMPANY IN WASHINGTON DC. Of all the places in the world we have used hop on and hop off buses this was the most absolute HORRIBLE experience. Someone could very well have had a heat stroke on it. read more

Not enough buses in circulation, been waiting at the Lincoln Memorial for over 45 minutes for one of their buses. Next time try the Old Town Trolly, their buses come every 10 minutes. read more

Sunset bus tour is advertised 2hrs, took 2hrs and 50 mins. Dropping us off 50 mins late. We lost our dinner reservations and were charged a $25 no show fee. Felt like we were held hostage on the bus. The driver made 5 stops instead of the advertised one. To top it off all restaurants in the area including Union Station were closed. read more

Absolutely horrible. Waiting over 30 minutes in 90 degree heat. Still waiting. Busses advertised as "every 20 minutes"

Dear lord, why did I choose this one. The buses are not maintained. I understand that tourist can be trashy and leave trash behind-but the staff should attempt to keep the bus clean. We had to transfer off the other bus due to-well, were not 100% sure as to why. we moved to a different bus, enclosed bus with no AC. Bus drivers short stop the bus- slamming you forward and backwards over and over. never again. read more

This is the second trip we used the Big Bus as our mode to get around DC. So this review reflects both experiences. This company is horrible! Save your money. Use the other hop on hop off company. Here are my issues: The buses are supposed to come by the stops every 15 minutes, they don't. We waited upwards of 30 minutes between buses. The buses are supposed to start at 9:30am however they only start at stop one. So if you're at stop 12, as we were, the first bus didn't get there until 10:45am. They should start a bus at each stop at 9:30am The buses don't always stop at designated stops. We had been waiting at a stop with other people and the bus passed right on by without stopping Their system is so antiquated. You buy your ticket on the app but then they scam your purchase code and print you out a receipt that you're required to keep. You have to show it every time you board. If you lose that receipt paper, there's no way to retrieve your purchase. We never lost ours but we ran into people who did. The first trip we had friendly drivers, the second trip, not so much. The recordings of the tour are just that, recorded. You get the same boring speech over and over and they are not properly synced with where the driver is. No personality whatsoever. You can't ask questions. The headsets are crap. The things you plug the headsets into are old and don't always work right. DC has another trolly hop on and off bus. I suggest using them. We saw 2 to 3 of their buses stop in between waiting for the Big Bus to finally get to a stop. read more

There are better options that we sadly missed. It cost more than uber for two days and the time saved waiting for uber and lyft (which are usually 20-30 min in DC) was the same on a hot bus, two of which broke down and one was in an accident. The headphone system was spotty so we tossed them. The trolly competitor was much better, had better stops, and had a tie in to the Arlington National Cemetery. read more

No AC in hot weather. Not enough buses. Too crowded. Too hot. They have no live guides - you listen with headphones. These work (shocking) but the narration is just awful. Full of their political opinions and stupid things that no one cares about. And way way too animated narrative. Like this!!! Every sentence is like this!!!! Guess they are trying to be comical or cute - who knows? They are not comical or cute. Just stupid. Very expensive and HUGE waste of $$. read more

Tour started 1/2 hour late. Had to ask driver to turn down heat. Could not understand or hear clearly guide because of static! Not worth the money. read more

We took our friend, who'd never been to DC, on the Big Bus tour. It takes about 2 hours to do the entire loop, seeing the most prominent attractions along the way. I do miss the live tour guides of the past. Sadly, it's prerecorded and earphones now. All and all, a good day meandering through our nationa capitol. read more

Big Bus Washington DC - Bus Tours Near Me - Washington, DC, District of Columbia

Bus with no AC during August is third world country sightseeing. Staff also pretty rude when they're asked about it. Big no no.

Zero stars if I could. Currently sitting at Union Station in a bus with NO working air. Transferred onto this one from the previous bus that also had no working air. Just sitting here waiting for who knows what. Totally ridiculous. Money wasted. Get a different tour experience. 10/10 would NOT recommend. read more

Expensive = Slightly overpriced. Staff = Indifferent not really engaging. Just going thru motions. Had one driver that clearly was having a bad day. He was slightly rude to us. But luckily you are on/off so usually won't see same person again. App = Neat idea. But we were there over memorial weekend. So they understandably had to make route edits. But they don't give you a way to know the new route. Even their sign and QR code for route changes didn't tell us much. The staff would quickly say which stops were not included but offer no info on what the route would be. It made it difficult to plan. It worked out as we fortunately had time and just rode it without any idea or confirmation of when we would hit stops. A huge recommendation for them would be to have a digital sign on the bus telling the next 2/3 stops and est of time. Likewise a set of next bus arriving to your location would be a nice add to the app. Lastly, I dropped a full star for them killing the bus at the spy museum. This whole concept is a rolling hop on/off bus. Stopping at spy museum for 10 minutes is ridiculous. We were caught up in it at least three times. read more

This was a disappointment from the start. We walked over to stop 17 from the White House. The bus was supposed to arrive around every 15 minutes. We waited over 30 minutes in blazing sun. The BB employee on site was very polite and apologized each time he contacted our wayward bus. When BB finally arrived, we rode from stop 17 to stop 1. We were then told our BB was so behind schedule we have to wait another 15 to get back on schedule. Since there was another BB stopped behind us, this was another time waster in the sun. I'd recommend the Old Town Trolley. There buses were running circles around BB and looked more comfortable as well. read more

We are joining the club of the very unwise people who didn't check reviews before booking this service. DO NOT PURCHASE tickets. It is a total rip off! They advertise 15-20 minute waits for buses. More like 30-45 minutes per wait and that's if you can get on. Most busses were full and you'd have to keep waiting or use standing room only in the bottom where you can't see anything. They are clearly over selling tickets for the amount of busses they have running. It's a scam. They also make you sit at stops for 10-15 minutes for no apparent reason. As we did this in July it is miserably hot. The city of DC should audit this company and not let them run without major changes and accountability. On our first ride we rode one stop, then they made us transfer busses but we missed the announcement because our headphones didn't work in the seat we selected. Then the driver said very rudely to us "You have to transfer busses. You would have known that if your ear phones were in." In addition, on one of our unpleasant rides where we were stuffed in like sardines with standing room only, one of their employees was on the bus sitting in a seat and didn't offer it to a paying customer. In this same ride the bus driver started yelling out to everyone on the bus that 5 dollars had been stolen from her and she hopes whoever took it appreciates her. Then she started yelling about how it could have been her coworker at the last stop that took it. Extremely unprofessional. Now we are sitting on a bus that has been sitting at the stop for over 20 mins in 90 degree humid weather and the AC is broken. Do not book this service. I repeat. DO NOT BOOK THIS SERVICE! read more

Number one I ONLY do hop on hop off in big cities so I can get to spots faster along with learning some history...usually when I have family or friends with me...I'm an explorer when I'm on my own and if the city is drivable or has trains I prefer to do my own thing. The tour is expensive for only being available until 5pm. This is the biggest flaw and since the site is NOT clear on this we felt cheated as we took other tours that was much more specific on the time it ends and this is the only one that leaves you stranded in the middle of daylight hours (peak hours) on the tour. The tour isn't specific about a stop your can hop off on. Not all lines were available for the price. Nothing is specific on the app or the website. Our tour came with a free hour bike ride but there was no info on how to get the bike ride ANYWHERE! The tour operators didn't tell you that a tour bus was over and that if you want to ride longer you must take another bus. What I liked: The recording was actually very good. However it didn't state when you could hop off...so still flawed. I noticed the Old Town hop on hop off Tour was still going at 10pm when I was at the Washington Mall and I was jealous that HubbyStanks hadn't booked that one instead. read more

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We wasted half of our day waiting for this bus... we bought a ticket, rode to the wash memorial: although the bus was dirty, and the canned tour bits being played didn't correlate with the actual location, It was no big deal. Then after a lot of walking we went to a stop near the MLK memorial and waited. And waited. And waited. We downloaded the app and watched the bus detour around our stop and skip us! So we walked all the way back to the wash monument and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally got a bus to Chinatown area. Then when we tried to catch the bus again the bus kept dying at stoplights, the narration would stop, and the bus crawled across the city at 5 mph. By the time we finally got to the museum, it was no longer selling tickets.. what a waste of time and money! Don't do it. read more

I was really looking forward to using the hop on and hop off bus. However, I was left dissatisfied and disappointed. The wait times were not as advertised. My average wait time at a bus stop was over 45 minutes. It seems no one is actively monitoring and managing the drivers. Pretty much wasted a day of sightseeing. 2 thumbs down. Wished I was on the old town trolley instead. read more

You get what you pay for. One of the cheapest options and while I wasn't expecting luxury, I also wasn't expecting steerage-style either. My biggest complaint is the bus not stopping at all the attractions listed. We did the red line and out of the 17 scheduled stops, 3-4 were skipped over. One that was skipped over was the Jefferson Memorial. When I asked the driver about it, he told me it was closed. It was a lie. It was not listed as closed on the website and on the way back from Arlington I could see people at the memorial. The buses are not air conditioned, so if it's summer time, expect to sweat..a lot. Many people opt for this cheap option, so at least half our travels on it were us standing. Also, don't be fooled by the "24 hours" listed on the website. The last run is around 5:00. In the end, depending on how many stops you plan on, Uber might be slightly cheaper or the same price. Spend a little more and opt for slightly better conditions than Big Bus Tours. read more