I have mixed feelings about this tour. The primary reason I booked it was because I was unable to obtain free National Museum of African American History and Culture. Started off fine. We got in line about 1/2 hour before the scheduled leave time of 10:00am. There seemed to be some confusion about our tour guide. Apparently our guide received a call late the previous evening to fill in. I neglected to get his name but he was a retired history professor and used to give tours at the Museum of African American History and Culture. There seemed to be confusion between the driver and the guide in terms of our routing. The guide started off with going around the bus asking where people were from, making it sound as though he was going to link his remarks to different parts of the country. He got distracted after asking 1/2 the people on our bus where they were from but it made no matter because it was never addressed again. We were told that we would arrive at the museum at 1:30. First off, we drove to the White House (on the corner of H street and 16th Street on the edge of Lafayette Park and St. John's Episcopal Church. We were all back on the bus in 5 minutes. Mentioned the Black Lives Matter pedestrian section. Would casually mention people like Frederick Douglass, Emmett Till, John Lewis, Thurgood Marshall, as well as other notable individuals but too bad if you didn't know who they were because he told us several times that he expected us to know who they were. In my thinking, people take tours to learn and often we don't know what we don't know. He could have educated people in the time that it took him to tell us multiple times that he didn't have time. (Had time to tell us about his son running marathons on several occasions.) Also told us that we would be getting to the museum at 1:30 but yet when he handed out the admission tickets, they all said 12:00 entry. After WH stop, went to MLK, Jr. memorial and to the Lincoln Memorial. I was glad that I had taken a previous Monuments at Night tour to those locales because otherwise, I wouldn't have learned anything about them. Apparently there was something of a mutiny on the bus as the driver addressed us when we got back on. He said that some wanted to get to the museum earlier. Then the guide started talking about everything we would miss on his tour and that we wouldn't have time to see everything at the museum anyway. I was concerned about the discrepancy between the stated 1:30 museum entry time and the entry time on the tickets so we departed the tour when it stopped at the museum at 12:00. We were there until they closed and I certainly saw more starting at 12:00 than I would have starting at 1:30. Half of our bus left the tour at 12:00. Not sure what happened with people who stuck with the tour. I thoroughly enjoyed the museum and would have liked more time there. Was not impressed with the tour guide. Oh, and he was on his phone at least 1/4 of the time.
When I was researching reviews for this tour, I was puzzled about the 5 star ratings and the 1 star ratings. I think I now understand the range of experiences. All depends on our guide.
Ответ от хоста
Jun 2022
Dear customer, we regret that your experience has not been entirely good, we invite you to review our different tour offers, we have a modern fleet of buses, experienced drivers, and expert and friendly guides that will make you feel very comfortable.