The bike ride and the cruise back were both cool ways to see the area from different vantage points. We had a good time with both. The not great review is meant to be a review of the third party who put together the package, not the biking or the cruising or Mt. Vernon.
This package didn't leave us enough time to actually be able to tour Mt. Vernon. There is only 1 boat back, that leaves at 1:30 and boards at 1:15. We arrived around 11:15, which gave us a couple hours to spend at Mt. Vernon, which would seem like enough time. However, we were given tickets to *get in line* to tour Mt. Vernon at 12:50. The wait in line is *at least* 20 minutes, so we didn't get in until 1:10--at which point we about needed to leave to catch the boat back. They really need to arrange it so you get a mansion tour *entering the line* time at 12:20 or earlier. Or else, they need to be clear that they can't guarantee that you'll be able to tour the mansion. (We are slower bikers, and also had a gear problem on one of the bikes where the lever to shift down wasn't working, so it got stuck in high gear, making it necessary to walk up hills. It also took a while to find the person with the bikes. The park where you pick up the bikes is fairly big. Maybe if we were faster and arrived earlier, we would have gotten an earlier tour time. But we had no way to know that we were under those kinds of time constraints. They need to communicate better, and work something out where they ensure people get a sufficiently early tour time.)
Also, you should know that the boat cruise is only narrated on the way *to* Mt. Vernon. If you only take the boat back, as you would in this package, you won't get any narration. That was not communicated either.
The company sent us a schedule for the day that had a time (9:00) and location for picking up the bikes, and listed an end time of 7, but no other details. (That probably should have been a signal to me that this wasn't the most professional organizer.) I don't know where the end time came from. The cruise back is at 1:30 and lasts an hour and a half. A surprise was that the cruise goes into Washington DC, not Alexandria where you leave from. It was cool to be able to see some of the Washington monuments from the water, so we were happy about that. But that's the kind of thing you might mention on the schedule you send to people.