Fearless40815481132
May 2023
We took this tour on May 11, 2023. We found parking across the street from the Old Jail stop, and bought our tickets at the Ticket booth. It took a while to wait through two families ahead of us, asking a lot of questions, and getting lengthy, thorough answers. Make sure you allow time for this, as we missed a trolley, and had to wait on the next one. Accessibility is an issue. The steps onto and off of the trolley are very steep, and I felt the opening onto the rows was very narrow. I don't understand why the design doesn't have extra steps. We are in our early sixties and pretty mobile. I am the youngest at 62, and I struggled to get down from the rows. We also traveled with my sister in law (75 y/o), who is usually mobile, but in a lightweight wheelchair temporarily. Getting a small, lightweight wheelchair folded and on the row with us was a very tight squeeze. The employees we phoned implied in advance that we could place the wheelchair in the row behind us, but there was never room for that. It sat amongst us in our very narrow leg room. There is a battle for seat space, and people are crowding around you while you are trying to load your family in a row together.
Our first driver was an older male who didn't stop talking, even at the stops. He never announced the stop numbers, and there was no indication of what stop it was, so spent most of my time trying to figure out which stop was next to make sure we got off at the planned stops. The guide spent a lot of time recommending restaurants along the route, which felt like he was advertising, or getting kickbacks from those locations.
The most difficult part was when we tried to get back on the trolley after a stop at #14. We waited a long time. Others ahead of us had waited so long (30+ minutes), one of them finally called the office to express concerns. They hadn't been able to get on previous trolleys that were full, either. This was at about 3 -3:30 pm on 5/11.
When a trolley finally came, not everyone waiting could get on. We had to split up our group of 4 up into 3 different and distant places on the trolley, leaving my brother-in-law (82, who has Alzheimer's) in a spot by himself, about 7 rows behind me. My husband , 65, ended up at the very back of the trolley, even further away from us (we were in the front car). I couldn't see him, and I didn't even know he was on the trolley until the end. I spent the next 7 stops preventing my BIL from getting off the trolley (thanks to all the other passengers who started chiming in to help me call him back onto the row). Almost no one was getting off, because everyone was headed back to their cars near the end of the day. There was no way to keep a group together (even 2 people). This may be a difficult situation if you have young children, too. You can't always sit together, or you may have to wait through several trolleys to find seats together. I wish we had taken our car. We spent about $160 for this. I have used the trolley in other cities, and I didn't experience such significant issues.