We bought the 48 hour ticket with boat tour. Of the 4 times we were on the bus for the two tours (beach and city), the tour was only live narrated twice. The brochure states "Live Guides" and I called the office and was told the narration should be live on every bus. The recorded commentary gets annoying with the same tune playing over and over again and it's not as informative or fun as a live commentary.
When were boarded the second day, it was raining so we sat downstairs. Many of the seats were covered in water because the windows were open. The guide on board neither closed the windows while it was raining nor attempted to wipe up the water although I later saw him with a green towel wiping up his own seat. The guide gave us ear buds. We said we'd like the live version. He said he couldn't do that because some people on board spoke French and "it wouldn't be fair to them". I told him I understood all tours had a live version. He said "the recorded version would be better anyway because he was new and didn't know much yet".
Be forewarned the city tour has long distances between sights of interest. We got off in Little Havana, found a walking tour on our phone to follow, and then caught the next bus.
We did the boat tour too. It was fun to motor past all the beautiful homes on the islands and here about the zillionaires who own them and look into their back yards.
Odpowiedź od gospodarza
Jul 2014
Good Morning,
We are sorry to hear you had a less than excellent experience with us here at Big Bus in Miami. We will also address with our employees that although we do have the narration in English, as well as 11 other languages, that we have also implemented the live guide narration on all busses. The busses leaving our Central Station on the top of the hour are to have the English narration done over the loud speaker and departures at the bottom of the hour to be done over the ear buds on channel 12.
As we do have the traditional classic busses here in Miami they don't have air-conditioning on the lower level and the windows tend to be open to provide a cross breeze. We will address with the guides to look at that when it is raining and to wipe off the seats to make sure that we have the most comfortable experience we can for all our guests.
You mention that you took the walking tour of Little Havana when you hopped off and hopefully that was with us. We provide a complimentary walking tour there for anyone with the 48 hour tickets departing at our stop in Little Havana at 10:45 am, 11:45am, 1:45 pm & 2:45 pm.
If you do make your way back to Miami or one of the other 15 locations worldwide we would like to have you come back to Big Bus to explore the cities and sights.